The Queen is a playing card with a picture of a queen on it. The usual rank of a queen is as if it were 12 (or 13), that is, between the King and the Jack, or Knight.
In the standard English playing card deck, legend states the Queen of Hearts is a representation of Elizabeth of York, queen consort of Henry VII of England. Certainly the headdress the queen wears under her crown is of the Early Tudor era.
In contrast, French deck manufacturers traditionally assigned each court card a particular historical or mythological personage. The Queens in a French deck have traditionally assigned names as follows:
- Queen of Spades: Athena
- Queen of Hearts: Judith (Biblical figure)
- Queen of Diamonds: Rachel (Biblical figure)
- Queen of Clubs: Argine (an anagram of Regina, Latin for "queen")
Famous quotes containing the word queen:
“We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: “When did the queen reign over China?” This whimsical and harmless scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)