Borg Queen


 * For the mirror universe counterpart, see Borg King.

"I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many. I am the Borg."

- The Borg Queen to Commander Data, 2063

The Borg Queen is the apparent leader of the Borg Collective. Throughout the history of the Borg there have been a number of queens who seem to take on the same character, perhaps indicating the Queen is a persona within the collective which could, in theory, occupy any drone.

Creation
There are a number of theories as to how the Borg Queen came into being:

Destiny
A species known as the Caeliar lived on the planet Erigol, having long ago harnessed claytronic atoms, programmable matter able to be controlled via a hive mentality. The Caeliar dedicated their lives to a Great Work, hoping to find the next evolutionary step for them. However, a deliberately malicious feedback pulse destabilized their Work and their solar system, forcing the evacuation of their cities. One of the cities, Mantilis was thrown through a subspace tunnel into the far past. The few Earth Starfleet officers who survived decided to make their living separate from the Caeliar, but were eventually forced to return. One Caeliar remained alive, Sedín, who merged with the three remaining humans, one of whom was Kiona Thayer who became the precursor to the first Borg Queen. 

The Beginning
The Borg Queen was subject of a world that had been struck down by a deadly disease, which was slowly killing much of the population. The scientists on the planet developed bio-organic regenerators, a nanotechnology which would be injected into a subject's circulatory system, eradicate the disease and rebuild the patients crippled body. The Queen to be, in very ill health, was selected to be the subject of the first experiment. It was successful in eliminating the disease but also began to change her, making her stronger than ever before, replacing her broken body with technology and giving her drive and determination to share her gift with others and make them as perfect as her superior self had become. The establishment attempted to resist but the Queen was not willing to let herself be destroyed and instinctively used the nanoprobes to assimilate others. She quickly led her drones in assimilating the entire planet and set to work to spread her gift to the rest of the galaxy. (SS Strange New Worlds VI (The Beginning))

Side Effects
Alternatively: The Borg Queen was originally a woman named Danzek, (or Asil*), who was the daughter of a scientist named Mynzek. Mynzek, with the aim of finding a cure for a terrible disease established a research base near the event horizon of a black hole. He sent ships out via a series of wormholes to capture subjects and run experiments on them in the search for a cure. Using the gravitational time dilation effect of the black hole he could coordinate centuries of research being conducted on the ships, which for those on the base took only days. Danzek was the guinea pig for these experiments on one ship, integrated with technology and biological components from numerous races she became powerful and returned to the station controlling a group of drone-like test subjects. After a brief confrontation in which the station was destroyed, Danzek, queen of her subjects escaped through a wormhole, which thanks to the temporal distortion generated by the exploding station could have sent here anywhere in space and time. 
 * The short story "Forgotten Light" offers another version of the Borg's creation but not one in which the queen was the catalyst for change. It is possible that Sivdar, the leader of the technologists, a group who pushed for the technology that created the Borg in this story, could have taken on the role of Borg Queen. Asil was her unofficial name, according to Star Trek: Voyager Companion.

Legacy
Another origin: The Vulcan Commander T'Uerell engaged in a mind meld with the Borg and discovered that the Collective was created by the probe V'Ger to serve as its heralds. During the Collective's development, it was discovered that females of certain species possessed a mental prowess and were capable of sifting through the endless amounts of information. These would become the first Borg Queens. However, the development of the Queen resulted in an entity that sought its own objectives and eventually abandoned the goals set forth by V'Ger. 

Purpose
The Queen appears to lead the Borg, having total control over the entire Collective, however it is possible she acts as a figure head, a voice for the Collective much like Locutus. When it appears she is ordering the Collective she may simply be enacting the Collective's will. As the Queen is also part of the collective it may be possible she stands in the mid ground, part of Collective decision but filtering out the best ideas herself, bringing "order to chaos". (, et al.) Should the Borg Queen die, any drones under her command would be forced to enter hibernation. 
 * "The Beginning" and "Side Effects" would seem to indictate the Queen is purely a leader, however "Forgotten Light" shows the Collective developing with equality, and the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy depicted a driving force behind the Queen.
 * Engines of Destiny indicates that Borg Queens are responsible for a single Borg matrix, with there being multiple Queens at one time, not a single Queen.

History
For years, the Queen selected industrial age worlds and did not assimilate them, but instead gave a select few on these planets technology, advancing the cultures dramatically over a small time period. Among these inhabited worlds were those of Species 642, Narisia, and 1429, a planet which later developed methods of traveling through time in starships. When either the species made significant progress towards something useful or lost their usefulness to her purposes, the Queen severed the assistance and cut off their links. 

In 2367, the Borg Queen was aboard a Borg cube that was sent to assimilate the planet Earth. Starfleet attempted to amass a fleet at Wolf 359, which was devastated using the knowledge gained from Locutus of Borg, the assimilated form of USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Although the cube was destroyed over Earth, the Queen was able to escape, either in body or mind, and was present when the Borg again attempted to assimilate Earth in 2373. This time, the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E) and the USS Defiant (NX-74205) (I) were among the fleet that destroyed the cube in the Sol system. The Enterprise-E was drawn into a temporal vortex as a Borg sphere attempted to travel back in time so that the Queen could warn herself of the resistance put up by the fleet. Instead, the time travel technology threw the sphere and Enterprise back to 2063, where the Starfleet crew was able to prevent the Borg from assimilating the Enterprise and Earth, preventing the warp drive that led to the first contact between Humans and Vulcans. 

In an alternate timeline where Montgomery Scott rescued James T. Kirk before he could be absorbed into the Nexus, the Enterprise-E did not exist, and thus the Queen traveled back in time and was not defeated as before. She and her drones assimilated Earth, erected a sensor barrier around the Sol system, and then methodically proceeded to assimilate surrounding worlds; she also reactivated links to her subject worlds. However, a time traveling Enterprise-D wound up in 2293, which the Queen became aware of through a Narisian named Balitor. The Queen possessed her body and attempted to attack and kill Picard, but was unsuccessful, and she terminated all Narisians linked to the Collective. The Queen was able to then control a Borg cube and eventually destroy the Enterprise, but her existence and that of her timeline ceased to exist when Picard was able to return Kirk to the Nexus. 

By 2375 the Borg Queen was a member of Species 125. 
 * Assuming the Borg designated their progenitor race Species 1 or 0, this would seem to indicate by this time the Queen had been replaced at least once.

The 2380s would see two different Queens. The first was created aboard a Borg Cube in Sector 10. The creation process was, however, halted by the crew of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E) a short time after coming online. Later, the Borg would capture and assimilate Admiral Kathryn Janeway - making her into a replacement Queen. She would be destroyed after being infected by Project: Endgame. 

A new Borg Queen was created, and as soon as she emerged from her chrysalis, she had two objectives - destroy Earth and crush the Federation. Since the Borg believed that they could no longer gain anything by assimilating Earth, they would instead destroy it; thus, the Collective launched their invasion in 2381, and the new Borg Queen utilized the connection to the former drone Locutus to taunt him. She also oversaw the invasion forces, moving between vessels and not allowing former drone Seven of Nine to lock onto her position. Due to the former Earth Starfleet Captain Erika Hernandez being infused with Caeliar catoms, she was able to listen in on the Borg Collective and locate the Queen as she led an armada to attack the planet Deneva. Noting the similarities between the voice of the collective and the Caeliar gestalt, Hernandez and the USS Aventine attacked and boarded a Borg scout craft to secure its vinculum to control the Collective via Hernandez. Although Hernandez was able to cause the collective to turn on itself for a short period, the Queen transferred her presence to that ship and assaulted the remaining crew, and regained control of her forces, causing them to sleep and regenerate quickly. After the Caeliar city ship of Axion came to the Azure Nebula to lure the invading Borg Collective there with its Omega molecule generator, the Queen overrode all other objectives and had the entire fleet move to the nebula. Once there, Hernandez presented herself for assimilation to act as a link between the Caeliar and the Queen, allowing them to reach past and find the remains of Sedín, which they dissolved along with the Collective.