The Game of Politics: Catherine de' Medici and Chess

Abstract

[Extract] This essay explores the performative capacity of chess for the sixteenth-century French queen and regent, Catherine de' Medici. It argues that ludic activities such as chess, along with other games and pastimes at court, must be understood in their gendered political context. A number of scholars have considered whether the replacement of the vizier piece by a queen, the increased mobility of this game piece over the Middle Ages, and the connection to women in the sixteenth-century version of the game's name in various European languages (such as scacchi de la dama and les eschecs de la dame enragee) may have reflected changing perceptions about powerful women at European courts in the period.1 However, such shifts need not be attached to the visibility of specific women to be of significance to gender analyses of early modern power. Courts were intense political environments that brought together women and men and required the development of a range of activities to promote conduct that reinforced hierarchies. Courtly play was, therefore, a performance of power.