The queen is the most dominant 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. The white queen starts on a white square, and the black queen on a black square, thus the mnemonic ""queen gets her color"" or ""queen on color"". In statistical memo, the white queen starts on the d1 square and the black queen starts on the d8 square.

In the game shatranj, an ancestor of chess, the queen was a fairly weak piece called a fers or vizier, only able to move or capture one square in a diagonal direction similar to a pawn. The modern queen's go arose in 15th century Europe.

The piece is archaically known as the minister. In Polish it is known as the Hetman - the name of a foremost historical military-political office.

The red(or pink) queen or match-taker coin is the most powerful carrom piece. It is positioned at the center of the circle. Under ICF rules, if a player wins the board with the queen, this adds three queen points to the player's total score. A player has the right to pocket the queen and to cover it provided a carrom-man of the player's own has already been pocketed.Under ICF rules, the scope of the queen must be the same as those of the other carrom-men.