The Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass a metaphor for the Chess piece?

Through the Looking Glass is the second of two stories written by the great mind of Charles Dodgson, known by his pseudonym Ð Lewis Carroll. Almost everyone has heard of the adventures of the young Alice in her imaginary world of Wonderland to which she escapes not once, but twice in a run from reality. AliceÕs Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Ð Through the Looking Glass are both incredible masterpieces of the literature of the 19^th century.

Queen of Hearts

While the Queen of Hearts represents one of the 52 cards in a deck, the Red Queen is a strange metaphor of the chess piece Ð the opposite of the white queen on the chessboard.

In Chess, a game that has been around for an extremely long period of time and is considered to be the game of the high classes and the intelligence of the world, there are many pieces. They are figurines, which represent different war-like characters with their special abilities and limitations. The most important one is the King, because when the King is in checkmate then the game is over. However, the most powerful piece is that of the Queen. The Queen is the one that can move forward and backwards, diagonally, vertically or horizontally, without any limitations in the number of squares. It is the combined force of a Rook and a Bishop. It is so valuable for a player that it is even doubted that one can win after losing their queen.

Carroll's Character

There are many facts about Carroll's character that makes us think about the most powerful piece in the board game. First of all it is her ability to travel backwards in time. Why is it making us think about the game? It the fact that moving backwards is not a normal move for neither chess piece nor human and by being able to do it, they are separating themselves from the others, thus looking more alike between themselves. There is also the fact that as the strongest of them all, the Red Queen is the one whose taking coincides with the falling of the Red side. Another similarity between the two is the fact that the character in Carroll's novel is the rival of the White Queen and since the entire action is written on the basis of chess, it is easy for us to presume that we have a pair of pieces.

White and Red pieces

There is one strange thing, which makes us wonder what was Mr. Carroll thinking when he wrote this story and it is why did he name the opposite side of the whites "red" even though it is accepted in chess that no matter the actual colour of the figurines, there can only be "white" and "black" coloured ones.

However, it is indisputable that the great mind of this 19^th century author has though it all, even what cannot be seen at first sight. It is also undoubted that there are just too many similarities between the Red Queen and the chess piece for us to think it was only just a coincidence. No, it was entirely intentional and well thought by Lewis Carroll. He even hid some meanings behind the veil of simplicity. But can we find them all? Can we see the connection between the Red Queen, the Black chess queen and our lives? Even with his help?