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In the television series STG, Vogager and movies there has always been a Borg queen character. While the Star Trek wiki has plenty of information about the history of the character. I'm still unclear as to a couple of things regarding the queen.

  • Is the queen we see in the different shows and films all the same queen?
  • Could the Borg have more then one queen? or is it split into multiple hives?
  • Do the Borg replace a queen if she dies, and if so how is one selected?

Considering that the Borg is a collective mind. How could it be possible to single out a single drone to be either promoted to queen or assimilated into that role. That in my mind would conflict with the nature of a collective. Since the individual does not exist, then how can one be selected.

Borg Queen

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    SHouldn't this be posted on politics.SE?
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 17:12
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    In addition to the answer below, her body has died 3 times that we know of, once in The Best of Both Worlds, Part II (which we only learned about in a much later episode), once in the movie First Contact, and once in Endgame
    – Izkata
    Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 0:15
  • Thanks @Izkata, I think I'll re-watch all of those. :)
    – Reactgular
    Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 1:38
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    @Izkata I recall at least one moment, that you haven't pointed out. The Borg Queen also dies in the end of VOY: Dark Frontier. Part II episode, on board of something like very small Borg sphere, that is chasing The Delta Flyer, escaping with rescued Seven of Nine. Voyager, which is waiting for The Delta Flyer, fires photon torpedoes to the other end of trans-warp conduit, causing its collapse and the destruction of this small ship, on board which Borg Queen was travelling.
    – trejder
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 9:07

1 Answer 1

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The Borg Queen really can't die.

The Queen isn't so much an individual as the collective personality of the Borg. 'She' has actually been killed multiple times. It's nothing but an inconvenience - the body she inhabits and speaks through is just another drone. When she died at Picard's hands, the local Borg she had collected under her direct control became leaderless - at that point, she functioned as the central node of their limited Collective (those Borg were not joined with the Collective of the past - they were too far away).

It's possible, as I've speculated in other answers (which I will link, when and if I find them) that the Collective did not initially have a personality 'in charge' of it - the Queen references her species at some point. Now, though, it does. It's possible that all the 'bodies' the Queen wears are cloned (perhaps from her initial DNA) to give her a consistent face and form.

The destruction of the Queen's current body would not be a serious long-term problem for the Borg - there's no chance they would have survived this long if they made the mistake of not backing up their vital systems. Killing a single drone (even if the Queen is inhabiting it) won't kill the Borg, ever. What does occur is a temporary and local loss of cohesion - the Borg Queen seems to take over function as a local central node for nearby drones. This makes sense - she's usually well-defended, she doesn't take a physical body except when there's an urgent matter, she cuts the communication loop significantly by localizing the Borg network, and by having direct control over the local network, the Queen has all the data on the local situation immediately at hand. This is what she did in First Contact, since the time-traveling drones were cut off from the Collective she took over as the central node, essentially becoming the Collective for the Future-Borg (and new assimilations).

If you kill the Queen the Borg in the immediate vicinity will be cut off (briefly) from the Collective, until they can reestablish the connection. The Borg 110 light years away, in the process of assimilating a starship? They're not affected in the least.

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  • +1 I hope you find those other links. This was a good answer. thanks.
    – Reactgular
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 17:32
  • I think I was mis-remembering this question and the top answer's comments.
    – Jeff
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 18:09
  • @ThinkingMedia She states in Dark frontier(DF) she is from a single species. When she dies at the end of DF, how does she appear later as the same exact "person?" Also why was she afraid that Janeway would kill her in DF if she could just pop up immediately? She could have done away with Janeway, assimilated the others, etc. 7 of 9 wasn't that critical as they were about to turn her into a drone anyway for refusing to help them. I wish you wouldn't have given this a correct answer, so we could have gotten some better answers, there are no quotes and nothing in-canon to support this answer.
    – JMFB
    Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 20:05
  • @JMFB: If you think you have a better answer, post it. The check can be given to another answer if it is better. If you think the question needs more attention, put a bounty on it. Stack Exchange has lots of ways to incentivize good answers.
    – Jeff
    Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 20:08
  • @Jeff Yes I know that. I just watched Dark Frontier and am confused about the Borg Queen. I could ask another question but it'd be shot down as a dup. You really didn't put any quotes, writers notes, etc. to probe your claims. For ex you said they cloned her?!? I can make up a bunch of reasons for why something happened, maybe there's a thousand queens also, but I have no proof of it. You make claims w/o anything to back them. Now the correct answer has been designated(pun int), and nobody is going to bother to research it further.
    – JMFB
    Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 20:16

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