✦ The Modern Heiress

The crown was never given, it was taken, square by square, move by move, until the whole board bent to my rules.

I once lived like the pawn in a chessboard, first to be sacrificed, never the one worth saving. People around me treated me as invisible, replaceable, like I was nothing more than a placeholder in their grand little games. I stood still like a statue, absorbing every stone they threw, too weak-willed to fight back, too cautious to draw boundaries. My abusers kept me in the dark, stripping me of confidence until I could no longer think for myself.

I blamed them for years, not realizing that one day, I would have to stop blaming and start playing their game.

my moves, my rules, my board

The turning point came in the most unlikely way, a game of chess with my then-boyfriend, now husband. I had never touched a board game before, the result of an isolated childhood where fun was forbidden. When he suggested teaching me, I hesitated, terrified of failing at something so alien. But he persisted, and we played. First round, I lost.

Second round, I lost again. The rules felt like a foreign language, the pieces like strangers I couldn’t command. But something in me shifted when I lost the third game, I started collecting my mistakes like puzzle pieces, studying every move I had botched. On the fourth round, I treated chess like an experiment. I began to see patterns, strategies, cause and effect.

That day, something cracked open inside me. I stopped playing scared and started playing smart. I attacked with surprise moves, calculated risks, and unexpected strategies. And finally, I won. My husband didn’t expect it, but his shock wasn’t as sweet as my realization: I was smarter than I gave myself credit for.

Chess became more than a game, it became the mirror I needed to see myself clearly. In life, I had always played safe, always stood still, always let others move me like I was expendable. But on the board, I discovered a hunger, a sharpness, a willingness to strike when the time was right. Each game made me bolder, less apologetic, more tactical. I started to think less like a pawn, more like a queen.

But the contrast in real life was painful. I was still weak-willed, insecure, too cautious with people’s feelings, terrified of being seen as cruel. I knew my limits but never exercised them. I let outsiders manipulators me, the same way I once let my parents control me. My life was safe, but it was suffocating.

Slowly, I began treating people like chess pieces, not cruelly, but strategically. I learned who was my ally, who was my backup plan, and who was my opponent disguised as a friend. I flipped manipulations back on their masterminds. I stopped explaining myself and started counter-attacking with silence, results, and power moves. And suddenly, I wasn’t easy to manipulate anymore.

As I leveled up, I met bigger opponents. My parents, the sharks who had always crushed everyone in their path, suddenly became my endgame. For years, I never dared to challenge them, because they were ruthless, disciplined, ambitious, and terrifying. But when the time came, I played them like a chessboard, studied their strategies, turned their force against them. And yes, I beat them to it not with cruelty, but with calculation, patience, and precision.

Enemies became allies, and those who refused to evolve simply fell off the board. I stopped broadcasting my plans and let results do the talking, boundaries were set, receipts were kept, and consequences were executed without fanfare. Quiet accountability became my signature move: no theatrics, just airtight documentation and actions that left manipulators with nowhere to posture. The people who once underestimated me found themselves cornered by their own tactics, and many quietly chose new terms of engagement.

That was the moment everything shifted, I moved from surviving in the margins to ruling the room. I learned to measure power not by noise but by outcome, to let strategy, not spectacle, define me. Allies multiplied, predators shrank, and my life filled with people who respected the rules I now set.

Deliberate, dressed in strategy, and utterly unmistakable, that’s the new version of me.

The Queen’s Code (Tips for Every Girl in the Game)

The world likes to pretend rules are fair, that they exist to keep balance, justice, and equality intact. But anyone who has ever stood on the wrong side of wealth or power knows the truth is far darker. Rules are not neutral, they are pliable for some, merciless for others. They bend for the rich, obey the powerful, and suffocate the ones who have neither. To understand how the game is played, you must first accept this: rules don’t define the players; the players define the rule.

If you have money, rules can be flexible, if you have power, rules will serve you, but if you had neither the rules will make to bind and bend you.

With money, rules become negotiable. Wealth buys leniency, buys silence, buys the kind of flexibility that can turn “impossible” into “possible” with a single transaction. Those with deep pockets know that laws, expectations, and moral codes are not immovable walls, but soft barriers waiting to be pushed aside. Money doesn’t erase the rules, it simply rewrites the consequences. And in a world obsessed with order, those who can pay are the ones who escape the weight of obedience.

With power, the game shifts entirely. Power doesn’t bend rules, it commands them. Authority turns law into a weapon, transforms social order into a shield, and makes obedience flow in your direction. For those who lack both money and power, however, rules become shackles. They don’t protect; they bind, twist, and crush under the illusion of fairness.

And that is the cruel truth no one says out loud: rules were never designed to protect the powerless, they were built to contain them.

checkmate, darling.

Life taught me that battles are unavoidable, but chess taught me something far more important, you don’t need to fight them all. Some fights are distractions, some are traps, and some are worth every ounce of your power. The trick is knowing which ones to step into and which ones to let collapse on their own. Avoiding battles doesn’t make you wise; choosing them makes you powerful. And the player who knows when to strike always outlasts the one who swings blindly.

I once thought pawns were weak, just like I once thought I was. Disposable, replaceable, insignificant. But then I learned that even the smallest piece can flip the game if it keeps moving forward. Every step a pawn takes is survival; every survival is a lesson; every lesson is a weapon. The piece they underestimate today is the piece they’ll regret tomorrow.

Transformation isn’t instant, it’s a climb, a grind, a fight against the very voice in your head telling you to stop. But pawns don’t stop; they advance. And with every square they conquer, they get closer to the crown. That was me, underestimated, doubted, dismissed until I kept moving forward, and forward, and forward again. Until one day, the pawn became the queen, and the whole board bowed differently.

The truth is, I no longer stand frozen, waiting for life to move me. I move myself. I strike when I choose, I step back when I must, and I never show my hand until it’s too late for them to stop me. The girl who once lived like a statue has disappeared. In her place stands the queen, decisive, dangerous, and untouchable.

And here’s the rule I live by now: once you’ve felt the power of the queen, you never go back to being a pawn. Once you’ve tasted control, manipulation loses its grip. Once you’ve seen how strategy flips survival into dominance, there’s no unseeing it.

I don’t play the game to survive anymore; I play to win. And darling, that’s the difference between being played and being legendary.

—
Your lethal confidante,
Madam Alias Solis
Writer, The Modern Heiress