The enigmatic Borg Queen is the central locus of the Borg Collective who 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 to encounter humanoid outsiders, 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.

Information on this being is still very limited. Apparently the Borg Queen has been destroyed on a number of occasions, but another queen always seems to take her place. (It is not clear whether more than one queen exists simultaneously, or if a new queen is created when the old one dies.) The Borg's collective nature makes it likely that each Borg Queen has all her predecessors' and/or counterparts' qualities and memories. Therefore when she speaks as "I," she is presumably referring to all previous manifestations of the Queen, going back probably thousands of years.

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. This information was never transmitted to Starfleet, however, because the Hansens were assimilated before they could communicate their findings.

In 2373, the Borg Queen spearheaded the Collective's attempt to alter Earth's history in order to make humanity easier to assimilate. However, due to interdiction by the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, not only did the plan fail, but the Queen and all other Borg involved--who were occupying the Enterprise at the time--were killed when plasma coolant liquefied their organic components.

This Queen was soon replaced by another, almost identical one -- a drone assimilated from Species 125 -- who encountered the U.S.S. Voyager in the Delta Quadrant when that Federation crew attempted to procure a transwarp coil. The Borg Queen Vessel was destroyed during that incident; however, it is not clear if the Queen herself was still aboard at the time. If so, she was replaced by another virtually identical successor, whom Voyager once again encountered in late 2376 at a time when the so-called "Unimatrix Zero" phenomenon threatened the integrity of the Collective. Several months later the Voyager battled the Borg and destroyed both Unimatrix Zero, and a transwarp hub during their final transwarp back to the Alpha Quadrant.