It’s not about killing the king. The king can never be killed. It’s about keeping him in check until he can’t move anymore
It’s also worth noting the term is “capture”. And outside of rare instance - you didn’t really want to kill knights and the like: You captured them, and ransomed them back to their family/liege lord etc.
And there is a reason the term “Kings Ransom” exists. John the II of France for instance was captured, and Ransomed for something like 300000 gold coins of the day - something like 300 million or up to about 3 billion in today’s dollars (conversion is a little fuzzy but to put it simply: A BLOODY TONNE OF MONEY).
The term “check mate” literally means “the king is dead”.
We know the word for king from other known forms like “sheikh” or “Shah”. I don’t think the word for “dead” was loaned to English from Persian or Arab in any phrases or sayings except “check mate”.
Yeah, but it’s about killing the king. It’s also about protecting your own king, so not a game of republicanism.
Apparently that might or might not be a mistranslation?
https://www.etymonline.com/word/checkmate
mid-14c., in chess, said of a king when it is in check and cannot escape it, from Old French eschec mat (Modern French échec et mat), which (with Spanish jaque y mate, Italian scacco-matto) is from Arabic shah mat “the king died” (see check (n.1)), which according to Barnhart is a misinterpretation of Persian mat “be astonished” as mata “to die,” mat “he is dead.” Hence Persian shah mat, if it is the ultimate source of the word, would be literally “the king is left helpless, the king is stumped.”
