František Chochola is perhaps not a household name, but he was quite an accomplished man. He has the illustrations to countless books to his name, as well as the design of several coins and a number of sculptures.1 Today, we’re talking about one of his illustrations. I’m not sure what he himself would have called this work, but it illustrates a Celtic fairytale called The young king of Easaidh Ruadh, so I’m using that as the title.
The story is that the eponymic young king is bored, so he decides to play a game against an evil sort of gnome called a gruagach.2 What game they play is, as far as I can tell, not specified. Given the setting, it was likely either fidchell or some variation of tafl, but Chochola had the happy inspiration of making it chess.
Black’s queen’s side is obscured by the king’s considerable girth. The rest of the position is fairly clearly visible, but the pieces are not easily identifiable and I’m not entirely sure whether that white piece I put on d4 should not really be on c4.3
Black, the king, is holding another piece, possibly a queen, possibly a bishop. Now, in the story, the king wins his first and second game against the gruagach, netting him a beautiful wife and an excellent horse, respectively.4 The third game, however, he loses, which sets in motion the drama of the story. The position must therefore be from the third game, because there is no way black is winning this position..
As a consequence, he has to fetch the Sword of Light. As Elden ring hadn’t been released yet, this means he has to steal it form the king of the oaken windows.5 This leads to his wife being kidnapped and his horse being, well, horsenapped, I guess. So the moral of the story is: don’t lose at chess!
Realism: 2/5 I think the fairytale is more plausible. Okay, maybe that’s a bit too harsh. Maybe this position could arise at the end of a game between two really poor players.
Probable winner: White, obviously. A queen and a rook extra should be more than enough
1. [That’s even more impressive when you realise he must have spent a considerable portion of his life trying to convince autocorrect his name is not Chocolate.] ↩
2. [Gruagachs are also knows as brownies, making this the most delicious instalment of this blog yet.] ↩
3. [The young king of the diagram editors.] ↩
4. [Probably he won a queen in the first game and a knight in the second one.] ↩
5. [Which is ridiculous. Windows could never run on the Acorn Electron.] ↩