Annotated Chapter 7 Cover
Chessboards are familiar metaphors in storytelling. Usually they signify either some battle of wits between two genius master strategists or the hand of one eeeevil genius master strategist manipulating events in ways that no one else can even clearly perceive, much less prevent.
Now that we’d assembled our team, knocked down their most powerful opponents to date, and hinted at such manipulations with the early appearance of the Heads of Houses, it would have been a natural time for us to introduce a larger threat. Erica, who knew what our plans for the next few chapters were, fed into this expectation by highlighting five white pawns in her layout. Are our white-hat-wearing heroes mere pawns in the plans of some dark-shrouded king?
This was kind of a double bluff, because you’d find out the answer was “yes” eventually, but not before you’d see this chessboard used by a few characters whom no one would label geniuses.
And that would make Taro a pawn that makes it across the board and becomes a queen?
He doesn’t want you calling him that…
(Not because there’s anything wrong with queens, mind you, but because Taro is a little [REDACTED] who’d think anything you called him other than King was an insult.)
Emperor? Is that still an insult? =)
Man, now I wanna watch Searching for Bobby Fischer.
“Why must I lose to such an idiot?” – Aron Nimzovich.
You know, I totally missed the symbology of the five white pawns the first time around.