Isabel la Católica, 1994

1994 Article in book about the new powerful dama (Isabel la Católica) in the new modern chess and draughts game:

WESTERVELD,  Govert  (1994). Historia  de  la  nueva  dama  poderosa  en  el  juego  de  ajedrez  y  damas. 

En Homo Ludens: The player. Institute for the Research and Teaching of the Game, Superior School of Music and Fine Arts "Mozarteum" - Salzburg - Austria, by Prof. Mag. Dr. Günther C. Bauer, Dr. Rainer Buland and coworkers, p. 203-225.

Argentina edition:

Homo ludens: the player. Buenos Aires: Institute for Research and Teaching of the game, 1996, pp. 103-116.

 

 

Yalom borrowed a lot of our article of 1994 without giving  the necessary reference to our work in her book "Birth of the new chess queen" in 2004. She only mentioned us two times, while se was copying a lot. She does not cleary state that we were the first to mention that Isabel la Catolica was the new chess queen. Anyway it is the reader who can better judge just this on the correct way. Dr. Arie van der Stoep says about that the following:  (Stoep, Arie van der (2014):

Reviews

Birth of the Chess Queen

Arie van der Stoep (Independent board game researcher)

Marilyn Yalom, Birth of the chess queen. Harper-Collins, New York, hardcover ed. 2004, paperback 2005. In: Board Game Studies. Issue 8, 2014, pp. 153-158

Spanish queen and chess history

Yalom's quest starts about 1000. After a number of gripping descriptions of chess manuscripts and absorbing depictions of strong female queens and empresses, Yalom arrives at 15th Spain, a place and time where and when chess players broke the old Muslim game. The Einsiedeln poem was devoted to a game with a chess queen which could move only to a diagonal adjacent square; in the late 15th c. the piece was allowed to advance diagonal and straight lines as far as it liked. Yalom pays attention to the
poem \Scachs d'amor" (Love chess) from the 1470's, the first manuscript referring to the new chess queen [2005:193-194]. The governing queen was Isabella of Castile; we make acquaintance with her on p. 199-211. Can we establish a connection between the new mighty chess queen and Isabella?", asks Yalom [2005:191]. Her answer is affirmative, based on the argument that Isabella was a militant queen, and that the new chess queen with her unlimited power is militant too [2005:211]. This argument is not new, Yalom borrowed it from Spanish chess historians. She adopts it to sustain her claim, but is it valid? I am afraid not; for the second time I lodge an objection against the method used by chess historians.