Wolf Hall is a romanticised biography of Thomas Cromwell. As such, it is necessarily set at the English court in renaissance times. And that, in turn, means that the dance music has instruments like sackbuts, rackets, and cornamuses. That on its own would probably makes the show worth watching, but there is more: there is chess! In the first season’s third episode, in which Henry VIII is declared head of the church, Thomas Cromwell can be seen at the chessboard playing against Edward Seymour.1
At this point in time, chess was already played according to roughly, but not exactly, modern rules. The main difference, for the purposes of this blog, is that white didn’t always start first and that, perhaps, I shouldn’t moan about h1 being a black square. Particularly because it isn’t.
Seymour has white, Cromwell black. They’re using rather strange pieces which, as far as I know, are rather anachronistic. The position seems quite believable though. I think this is it:2
The piece on h2 actually has the two protrusions on top that, in early chess sets, should signal the bishop. But it obviously can’t. Moreover, we see master Seymour, who has white, play a piece from e2 to f3, so I’m pretty sure these pieces on f3 and a3 are bishops and the one on h2 is a knight.
We can also conclude that black is absolutely crushing his opponent. I guess he doesn’t just crom well, he also plays chess well.3
Realism:4/5 Everything seems reasonable.4 I can’t say I know a game in which this position occurred, but it may well exist.
Probable winner: We never find out in the episode, but black is doing very well. He is two pawns up, and there is little to be done against Bb6, Nxf1 and exchanges into a winning endgame.
1. [Don’t worry, I will say more.] ↩
2. [Henry VIII probably found out that Catherina of Aragon didn’t use this diagram editor.] ↩
3. [At least comparatively. The standards of play in the sixteenth century were probably quite low.] ↩
4. [Too reasonable. Once again, standards of play were probably low enough that games wouldn’t last this long] ↩