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The queen (♕ ♛) or archaically known as the '''minister''' is the most powerful Piece in the game of Chess . Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of their first rank next to their King . Beginners often accidentally interchange the placement of the queen and king, thus the Mnemonic "queen gets her color" - similarly, "queen on color", which uses alliteration. (The white queen starts on a white square, and the black queen on a black square.) In Algebraic Notation , the white queen starts on d1, and the black queen on d8. In the historical ancestors of chess, Shatranj , the queen was a fairly weak piece called a ''fers'' or Vizier , only able to move or capture one square in a diagonal direction. The modern queen's move arose in 15th century Europe. The queen can be moved in a straight line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, any number of unoccupied squares as shown on the diagram at the right, thus combining the moves of the Rook and Bishop . As with other captures except En Passant , the queen captures by occupying the square on which an enemy piece sits. Ordinarily the queen is slightly more powerful than a rook and a bishop together, while slightly less powerful than two rooks. Because the queen is more powerful than any other piece, it is almost always disadvantageous to exchange the queen for a piece other than the enemy's queen, unless doing so leads to a position where the king can be Checkmated . The queen is at her most powerful when the board is open, when the enemy king is not well-defended, or when there are ''loose'' (i.e. undefended) pieces in the enemy camp. Because of her long range and ability to move in more than one direction, the queen is well-equipped to execute Forks , but these are only useful if the forked pieces are undefended, or one is undefended and the other is the enemy king.
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