[amalcon]

The queen is absolutely an inelegance from a rules perspective. That seems to be kind of the point: rules elegance is neither necessary or sufficient to create a good game (though, arguably, it helps: see Go). Having a single piece with far more offensive power than any other is interesting, which is good in actual gameplay.

The queen is absolutely the wrong thing to pick on, though. Castling would be an obvious example, but my go-to is En passant. The pawn double-move is obviously inelegant (sharing the problem with castling that it may only ever be a piece's first move), but it inarguably makes the game better. If you've ever tried playing without it, you know that it makes the opening both faster and more interesting.

However, the pawn double-move introduces a strategic problem where a pawn can sometimes skip past another. The en passant rule is thus introduced as an obvious fix for that bug.

It would be problematic to have either of these rules without the other, and neither is particularly elegant, but the combination improves the game a lot.

See also: the infield fly rule in Baseball, the shot clock in any sport that has a shot clock, I'm sure anyone can name several more.