The
enigmatic Borg Queen is the central locus of the
Borg Collective. She brings order to the legions of
voices within the Hive mind and provides a common
direction — much like the queen of an insect colony.
She resides primarily at Unimatrix One in the Delta
Quadrant, but will often leave this home base to
participate in assimilation efforts of a special
nature.
The Borg
Queen has a unique personality and a sense of
individuality that normal Borg drones are not
allowed. She is usually the one who "speaks" for the
Collective in situations where contact with
outsiders is best conducted by an individual. But
for the Borg Queen the concepts "I" and "we" are
interchangeable. In her own words, she is the "one
who is many."
The
Queen spends much of her time in her "lair" with her
head and spinal column residing in a special alcove.
When she emerges, she will "re-assemble" herself
into a predominantly artificial body — the arms,
legs and torso appearing to be entirely synthetic,
while the head and shoulders seeming to be organic,
but with substantial cybernetic implants.
The
earliest Federation data on the Borg Queen was
collected by Magnus and Erin Hansen, two exo-biologists
who spent several years studying the Borg in the
2350's aboard their science vessel, the U.S.S.
Raven. The Hansens were assimilated before they
could transmit their findings to Starfleet, but the
information was later recovered by the U.S.S.
Voyager about 20 years later.
The Queen
"allowed" the drone Seven of Nine (who had been the
daughter of the Hansens — probably the first humans
ever assimilated) to be separated from the
Collective by the U.S.S. Voyager, in order
for her to gain experience as an individual. Almost
two years later, in 2375, the Queen attempted to
lure Seven back into the Collective — again, by
having her give herself voluntarily to the goal of
Borg "perfection", while remaining an individual
within the Hive. After refamiliarizing Seven with
assimilation procedures during an attack upon
Species 10026, the Queen ordered her to program
nanoprobe viruses that would be used surreptitiously
upon Species 5618 — the human race.
In spite
of the Queen's seductive appeals to the former
drone, Seven of Nine refused to assist in the
destruction of yet another race, especially the one
she had come from and was now living among. The
Queen even brought in the Magnus Hansen drone to
convince Seven that her "family" was the Collective.
These temptations ultimately failed, and Seven was
rescued by Captain Janeway and the U.S.S. Voyager,
to the Queen's chagrin.
In
2376-2377, the Queen was engaged in an obsessive
quest to uncover the interlink frequency that bound
certain drones in a dreamstate realm called
Unimatrix Zero while regenerating. She wished to
terminate this realm, because in it drones were able
to regain their identities as individuals, and even
though they would awaken from it without any memory
of the experience, the Queen considered it a threat
to her control over the Hive. Thanks to intervention
by Voyager, the Queen actually got her wish,
but not quite how she wanted: Unimatrix Zero was
shut down, but the drones who occupied it regained
their individuality in the physical world and began
a resistance movement to undermine the Collective.
In
2378 the Queen once again had a fateful encounter
with Voyager when a future version of Kathryn
Janeway came back in time from the year 2404 with
technology that could help the lost starship resist
the Borg while using a Transwarp Hub as a shortcut
home. The Queen was actually approached by Admiral
Janeway with an "offer" — to help the Queen prevent
Voyager from destroying the Transwarp Hub in
exchange for the ship's safe passage to the Alpha
Quadrant. But the Queen wanted more — she wanted to
assimilate the technology from the future. The Queen
thought she had the upper hand when she attempted to
assimilate the admiral, but it turns out the older
Janeway was carrying a neurolytic pathogen that
proceeded to infect the Collective. That pathogen
brought chaos to the Collective, leading to the
decapacitation of the Queen and the destruction of
Unimatrix One.
The extent
of the damage to the Borg as a whole, and its status
as a continued threat to the galaxy, remains unknown
at this time.
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