I once idly speculated that Picard was the King of the Borg briefly. Was Seven of Nine the Princess of Borg? Voyager added a lot of backstory through Seven. Her parents Magnus and Erin Hansen are the first from the Federation to study them and coin their name. Magnus is absorbed into the Collective, and the Queen keeps him around for 20 years just so she can surprise Seven with him. We don't know for certain what happened to Erin. If Seven is the Princess, is Janeway the brave knight on a white horse come to rescue her?
That would imply that there was something about 7 beside her body that was being groomed because otherwise the Queen is the Queen, and just d/l'd into a new body if something happens to the old one.
When a bee colony gets too large, it splits off - with a new Queen. Seven could have fulfilled that position, if the Borg Queen had wanted her to (and if she'd stayed a drone).
Maybe I'm just seeing too many possible cubbyholes. If Magnus is a member of the Collective, and if the Queen is a distillation of all the voices, could the Queen's personality be that of Erin Hansen? This would allow interpretation of Erin as the Queen, Magnus as the Queen's consort, and Annika/Seven as the offspring, tying in with the Queen's allusion of family. I sometimes wish they'd cast Susanna Thompson as the mother as well.
In TNG the Borg were like bees. In Voyager they were more like Buggers. The Queen didn't seem to have any real motive for her actions in Dark Frontier. Her actions were more response to plot demand than a logical consequence of established Borg precedents. The writers wanted Seven to be confronted with her old Borg life and tortured by its ethical implications and the queen behaved accordingly. Stage 1: Kidnap 7. Stage 2: ? Stage 3: Galactic domination.
Yeah, I'm sure I'm reading more into it than there is, and giving the writers more credit than they deserve. I never liked the idea of a Leader of the Pack either.
I think you're reading too much into it. There were many families that got assimilated, so it's not just the Hansens. Besides, the Borg existed for centuries (millennia?) before the Hansen family came along. The Queen has always considered the Collective her "family" (the human word that best approximates what the Collective means to a Borg).
I always figured the Queen was just a function within the Collective, and they could choose any drone to fill the role. This would explain why death is but a minor inconvenience for her, and her appearance/behavior changes.
She does seem to have some uniqueness though and not be just a collective voice. But yes, physically she could be anyone. I'm assuming there is some hormonal element to her choosing female bodies.
No no no. :P The Borg Collective is a single giant mind. It's spread throughout all of the drones, just like our mind is spread throughout all of our brain cells. This mind is the Borg Queen. The body we saw played by Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson is just a puppet that the mind controls. There's no royal family. For my take on why the Borg wanted Picard, have a read of my free novelization of The Best of Both Worlds, Part One, chapter four. A link to it is in my signature.
As we say in Texas, y'all brace yourselves. I agree with this. And you thought you would never see it. LOL The Queen has to be "just another drone" and this is because ordinary drones are all the material the collective has to work with. I personally think that we saw three different Queens, and that there are more potential Queens available. It doesn't make sense to have multiple Queens at the same time, she is "the one who speaks." She is kind of like "The Mouth of Sauron" from the Lord of the Rings, there is something or someone behind her pulling her strings. To me the Borg Collective, is a consolidation of minds controlled by a machine, it doesn't have empathy, and no imagination. It has the single slightness of a computer program set on figuring pi to the list digit. In this case apparently it is set on finding the Omega particle. It needs a interface, and that interface is the Queen. I think the Queen is fascinating, there are these small tidbits scattered in the various Borg episodes through the different series. One of the last fan fictions I wrote used the point of view of the Queens themselves. I used canon references laced together with my own imagination. In the prolog I explained my theory of the Borg. http://www.jceternal.com/3queens.htm
Hah, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Nice to know we don't butt heads on -everything- Trek. Now I'm not sure I'd equate the Queen to the Mouth of Sauron. Then again I just saw the Mouth as a glorified messenger who clearly was doing the will of his boss. The Queen may be propped up by the Collective, but it does her bidding as well, a more symbiotic relationship. Ever read the Destiny novels? They have an interesting take on the Borg Queen that I like, and is somewhat tragic.
The Borg Queen doesn't serve the will of the Collective, it IS the Collective. A puppet body controlled by the mind. Think of it as though your mind was put in the internet and controlled your original body by remote control.
Actually yes, and it is tragic, but truthfully I didn't care much for David Mack's explanation. I read them because I wanted to write a fan fiction set in the Destiny time line. My goal was to bring back Janeway in a plausible way and write a really good action / adventure while I was at it. My problem began last May when I was in a really bad car accident. A woman in a F150 Ford pickup truck missed seeing a red light and my orange car. I was in ICU for three Days, the Hospital for another five days and in a Rehab for another two weeks. That will play havoc with your muse and for a good long time I couldn't write anything. There are several plot devices that I didn't care for in those books, the biggest one being that the Caelier became the heroes in a very deus ex machina climax. Up to that moment the Caelier had no redeeming qualities. They were only shown as xenophobic bullies, there wasn't any growth of character first they were one thing and the next minute they were another. Actually that's my favorite kind of plot hole because the whole thing then becomes something I can explain and exploit in fiction. In other words I can provide the reason. I think that is the difference between some fans, there are those that can point out the difficulties, the inconsistencies and state how they would do it better. I always see those as opportunities for fic. We all fix things in our own ways. The first fic I ever wrote was a retelling of "Endgame", in my fic everything you saw happened, but I added thoughts and reasons and a whole lot more Borg lol.