A surprise decapitation while she's on the john would kill Mab sure enough I think. I don't really know why everyone is making such a big deal out of this since there are hundreds of ways to kill Mab as long as:
1) She is killed by the protagonist with a plot shield.
2) Her death requires superhuman effort but yields almost no result as Maeve takes her place almost immediately.
3) She is not killed by superior magical skill.
4) She is outsmarted and humiliated thoroughly beforehand.
5) She is wounded countless times by cold iron.
6) She is not picked up by Lea and thrown into a reactor shaft in an act of penultimate compassion.
7) It could have gone either way.

 

No your missing the point she really isn't. We've seen that fae are affected by iron to a greater or lesser degree depending on power. It took the death by a thousand cuts and someone holding her down forever while she wasn't even trying to save herself to finish off Aurora who is orders of magnitude weaker than Mab. If it was as easy to kill a Queen as that then they wouldn't be nearly the threat that they are. Until I see Butcher say it point blank I will never believe that a simple iron dagger will do anything more than make her mad.

 

Who ever said it would be easy? The point is that more powerful Fae are harder to kill because you have to get past all that power in order to kill them. I mean, it's damn near impossible to kill Mab not because she's somehow more immune to iron than your average faerie, but because she has so much power that getting close enough to even scratch her is nigh enough impossible. To refer to my earlier example; the President of the USA dies to a bullet like any other man, but he's surrounded by so much security at all times (a visible - or not so visible - display of power) that actually getting a shot off is near enough akin to proving the (in-)existence of God.

EDIT: If power means so much, why are the Black Court on the brink of extinction?

 

Because they were a solitary group who never worked together and people had a detailed page by page guide on the best ways to kill them and where to find them handed to them by one of the Black Courts worst enemies. They were tracked down one by one at their most vulnerable moments and killed in their sleep.

I think this is just going to come to a difference of opinion though. I'm not going to change my mind and I don't think you are either.

 

It's not really a difference of opinion... simply put, magical power doesn't give you any physical immunity to being stabbed in the heart or having your head cut off. It does seem to confer an increased rate of healing and regeneration, for pretty much all magical species (including wizards), which means powerful magical beings are much more likely to survive from near-fatal wounds. But that's about it. A bullet to Mab's brain would probably do her just as well as a sword to the neck, but she probably has reflexes fast enough to avoid it.

 

Well it's not like Mab doesn't have her vulnerable moments. You probably couldn't hurt her in the middle of winter, in Arctis Tor (she probably has Intelectus there anyway), but if you try in the middle of summer, somewhere outside of her domain (like Chicago) the odds would be stacked differently I think.

Just went back to Summer Knight, and in chapter 2 when Dresden rolls an iron nail in her direction, she seems awfully skittish (maybe she didn't want to have a blister on her perfectly manicured hands). She was probably just surprised but it's still funny.

 

Another thing worth noting, the Word of Jim Ryuugi quoted a couple pages back does explicitly say that your average vanilla mortal is theoretically capable of killing Mab (granted the odds of success are incredibly low, but that's to be expected).

The Dresden books has always been very big on the whole idea that power is only a small part of the equation. This is not Dragonball Z, where having a higher power level makes you completely immune to everything.

Y'know, this gives me an idea for a fun, if somewhat absurd, plot bunny. One of the Queens/Ladies gets murdered, and Harry gets put in charge of finding out whodunnit. At the end of the investigation, he finds out it was some random mortal mugger with a steel knife who just got really, really, really lucky.

 

That would be extremely amusing.

 

Especially if it were Lily. Titania would be royally pissed with loosing two 'daughters' to cold iron in less than 10 years. Someone should call the faerie Guinees Book of Records.

 

Well no not really your kind of wrong again, the level of power actually seems to directly affect what constitutes "fatal." If a Fetch or an Ogre can survive having limbs lopped off with an iron blade I again don't believe for a moment that a knife or a bullet will put down a Queen. Look I'm going to say it again, until I see a word for word quote from Jim I wont believe it even remotely that a knife or a bullet will do more than really piss them off.

 

Look up to Chengar's post. And, by the way, having your arms cut off isn't immediately fatal even for vanilla mortals.

 

I think it would certainly make you think twice about continuing to live...the lack of blood for one thing might put a slight downer on life.

 

Yeah well it sure hampers someone with a human or human-like anatomy, but not all faeries are like that now are they?

I read through the 'Faeries' section of the DF RPG book and it stated that:

"Iron (which they call "the Bane") burns them with its touch. This is more than simple discomfort - it is a poison, affecting both body and spirit."

"Additionally, fae aren't used to enduring pain. Like children, they get scared and wound-up about relatively minor pains..."

"A Lady is easily as powerful as a Senior Council wizard. A Queen is a powerful as an old god, an Archangel, or the entire White Council while in Faerie; plot device territory. Outside of Faerie, they're probably as powerful as the entire Senior Council."

"No Faerie Queen can kill anyone who isn't attached to the Courts through birthright or bargain."

 

Perhaps the length of exposure is also an issue. The post above me describes it as a poison, spreading death as it moves through Fae.

Sure you can cut Mab with an iron blade, but she might Hulk it, she could heal so fast you'd never really know you did anything truly significant. Put her in an iron cage however... and then you see results. A one time hit of iron won't be enough to do it but constant exposure might work.

 

I'm still finding it hard to believe that actually stabbing through the heart with what is essentially a radioactive knife wouldn't kill her. Think about it. The blade goes into her heart and minute fragments of iron are all but instantly spread throughout her entire body. Even if she isn't killed instantly and has time to kill her attacker, that's still basically the equivalent of a human sticking his hands on a bar of plutonium.

 

I'd have to agree that cold iron straight to the heart is, depending on the details (how far the knife penetrated, how much iron gets left behind, etc) either fatal or really bad news. I can't see anything with a weakness to cold iron being very happy in the worst case scenario (blade penetrates deep into the heart and breaks, leaving a big chunk of cold iron lodged deep within the Faerie's body).

I could see it being a combination of the two factors, and both severity of injury and length of exposure being important when it comes wounds inflicted with cold iron.

 

Except Mab would be willing to rip her own heart out of her chest if meant survival, though it is up to debate about whether she could survive having an organ pulled out. Far more likely that you could take her out with a shotgun blast to the head followed by emptying as many rounds into her body as you can before the angry bodyguard takes you out. This is all speculation of course, we have no idea how well Mab might have planned for just this kind of thing, for all we know the Dresdenverse could have its own version of horcruxes.

 

Mab has no soul, so her essence is most likely bound to her body in a way that prevents immortality through that or a similar method.

 

Well if you look at it from the point of view of the DFRPG, then all Fae have the Catch of Cold Iron. Which means that Cold Iron will penetrate and neutralise all defensive, toughness related and healing powers they may have. They simply don't work, no matter how powerful they originally were. And since, I believe anyway, the DFRPG is considered canon, this might solve your dilemma.

 

See now this I could totally buy, I've never said it wouldn't affect Mab but I simply don't believe for a second it would kill her. However if you somehow forced that much cold iron into and around her for a long enough time and if shes actually capable of dying as we know it given that its an entirely different deal to her I'd think that would do it.

This is all setting aside though the fact that she's so old time is more or less meaningless when trying to talk about her, I'm sure the possibility of this happening and how to survive it have crossed her mind at one point or another.