Okay, heres my thing. Are the Queens, aka Mab and Titania, immortal or are they replaced over time. Were the Mothers always the mothers or were they once Ladys and then Queens and finally Mothers? If so how long do they live?

 

It's a cycle, and we have now way of knowing how long a Sidhe lives. Titania and Mab have presumably been Queen since Shakespeare's time at least.

 

The way I gathered it from Summer Knight; Mab, Maeve, Aurora, Titania, Lily, and the others aren't immortal. But Sidhe are extremely long lived.

I ... cant remember where it is exactly, but Mab implies somewhere she's at the very least two thousand. I think.
Don't quote me on that, though.

Its kind of obvious they aren't immortal in the sense that they're unkillable, as Aurora proves. But I think it was inferred with the conversation with Lily that theyre a Cycle kind of thing. Lady becomes Queen becomes Mother.

 

I remember Harry saying something about them and the 'dawn of the human race', or something, but can't remember what or where.

 

If it is a cycle then I think can assume that at least Mab will die or become a Mother at some point in the books. Hopefully die.

 

FOOL. Mab is eternal!

 

Personally I prefer Maeve

 

I like Mab the best, she owns Maeve. Altough Mother winter is way above them. And no, I do not like summer court...

Anyway, from the books I understood that they live for great periods of time so that even long lived wizards might believe that they are inmortal, however they eventually "age" and take on the next part of the cycle (Lady > Queen > Mother) so I suppose Mother dies of old age =)

 

I Quote Nuhuh. FOOL.

Mab > Maeve. Even I respect Mab's awesome power and prefer it to Maeve's blatant whorish attitude.

Also; the answer to your question from IRC Last night, after I left.

Yus I do

 

Slightly off topic, but Maeve and Mab both come from the same root, the Gaelic Medb, which means intoxicating. (Meabh is a variant of Medb.) Fits rather nicely, no?

(Titania is perhaps based on Titanius, meaning "of the Titans". Aurora and Lily need no explanation.)

Maeve is, unfortunately, somewhat intoxicated by herself.

 

The name Titania is a name give to one of the characters (a fairy queen) in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Shakespeare took the name from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', where it is a name given to the daughters of Titan's.

As far as I know.

 

I like Maeve more because I say that what we see is an act to make you under estimate her. I say she is far more like Shezza's Maeve than the spoiled brat that she acts like in the books.

 

Mab is also from Shakespeare's plays. Mercutio(Romeo and Juliet) had an entire speach about her.

 

On a sidenote:
Lily isn't a changeling anymore, right?
But did she just become a full faerie because of the powers that she became through Aurora's death or did she chose after that?
It is never said in the books

 

Yeah. To have the power of Summer Lady she would have to be a Sidhe.

 

At the end of Summer Knight she said that she still hadn't chosen, and that it was the first time that power had gone to a mortal.

 

Oh. I guess she chose by Proven Guility though.

 

I don't think so, or at least I don't remember any mention of it. She did act (for lack of better word) sidhe-like, I thought that had more to do with spending four human years in the Nevernever (and who knows how many year in Faerie; don't forget time passes differently there).

 

They are definitely replaced. Bob describes the different Queens as The Queen Who Was, the Queen Who Is and the Queen Who Is To Come (Summer Knight, Chapter 10). So, assuming it's not just a metaphor because we mere mortals wouldn't understand it otherwise, they are replaced.

As to how they are replaced, that's harder to answer:

The Lady can be killed, we have seen that in Summer Knight.

We know that a Lady is bound to her Queen, so she can't just stab her in the back or something. And there aren't much people left who could actually kill a Queen. The Mothers could have some kind of veto or something to dispose of the Queen when she goes against her court or becomes irrational, but that's just a theory. That pretty much leaves the opposing court, but I don't think that Lady or Mother of one court have the power to kill the other Queen.
So I think that a Queen can only be killed/disposed of by the other Queen.

As for the Mothers: Who would want to kill them? They don't seem to intervene in anything, so they are probably pretty much ignored by everyone else and die when the Queen becomes Mother.

Which leads to another question:
Can a Queen be killed? Because then she would be the "Queen Who Was" and become the new Mother. Or maybe she only becomes a Mother when she retires the old fashioned way after a certain amount of time.

 

There is so much we don't know...

Faeries ARE immortal, but one can kill them, they just don't die 'normally'
Soo...how can the Queen Who Is become Mother, if the Mother doesn't die?
Who kills her? Or does she go to some other world beyond this one, the Nevernever and the Outside?

What triggers the 'change'?
When the Mother dies/disappears, does that automatically end the regime of the Queen Who Is? And make the Lady the new Queen?

How long is such a period?
Mab is at least 2000+ years around and probably just as long Queen, maybe even longer...

When Winter's Queen becomes Mother, does that mean that summer's Queen becomes the new Mother, too?
Is it synchron? There must always be a balance and wouldn't it destroy the balance if one Queen has the other Queen by more than a few millennia of experience?

So many unanswered questions...I hope Jim Butcher explains these things in one of his next books (I hope soon).