“Listen to me, Marcus Fenix! I will not let my people die! We have a right to live, a right to this world! Your father must complete his task!”
- Myrrah (Gears of War 3 – Act 5, Chapter 5: Ascension)
“Okay, I really need to know what Myrrah was yapping about. She knew your dad before E-Day? How? I mean, she looks human, did she join the Locust country club for ****s and giggles or something?”
- Baird (Gears of War 3 – Act 5, Chapter 5: Ascension)
"You humans! Why do you think your lives are worth more than ours? Don't you realize who we are? Don't you recognise all your most admirable qualities in us? Oh yes... we are genocidal monsters! Just like you!"
- Myrrah (Gears of War 3 – Act 5, Chapter 6: Threshold)
Finally, we come to Myrrah, the decidedly human-looking Queen of the Locust. The first question regarding her is whether she is human or not.
“You know what we are, Adam. He could hear her voice more clearly than Elain’s sometimes; authoritative, patrician, human. You know where we come from. We deserve to live, we have the right to live, but you’ll never let us. Just remember that what’s killing us will one day kill you. And I shall be there to see it.”
- Myrrah (The Slab – Chapter 2)
"Adam, you knew this day would come." It was a familiar voice: silky, imperial, polished, and utterly human.
- Myrrah (The Slab – Chapter 5)
Twice in the Slab Myrrah is referred to as being human. In Gears of War 3, the queen is unharmed by the imulsion countermeasure activated in at the climax of the story, meaning that she does not possess lambency in her cells. This is important for two reasons – first, it means that she is not in the process of turning Former; second, it means that she cannot be Locust in any capacity since, as has been discussed, each and every Locust has lambency.
A popular idea is that Myrrah must be Ruth, the patient from New Hope whose medical file was present as a collectible in Gears of War 2 and is quoted above. If this was the case though, it doesn't quite add up, Myrrah doesn't have the swelling in her joints, long nails or lack of hair that Ruth did. The physical description indicates that Ruth is turning into a Sire or Locust. It can be seen that Myrrah shares nothing in common with the Sires or Locust and therefore nothing in common with Ruth. If Myrrah was Ruth then she would have lambency, and would have been killed by the imulsion countermeasure.
Another argument states that Myrrah must be the one patient from New Hope who was cured of lambency and immune to imulsion. Unfortunately, there is little that supports this idea – why was the cure not taken to Mt. Kadar when the scientists relocated there? Why were the Sires left in stasis in the first place if a cure had been found? And why would Myrrah not use the cure on the Locust if she was indeed immune to the effects of imulsion?
And just because there’s always one…
“He’d found some of [Elain Fenix’s] remains in the tunnels – arm bones and scraps of fabric he recognised all to well.”
- Adam Fenix (The Slab – Chapter 2)
… She’s not Marcus’s mother.
So how did a human end up leading the Locust Horde?
“Queen Myrrah. It was an odd choice of title. It smacked of termite colonies and ants, an analogy he knew she’d find offensive, but he suspected she’d chosen it in an attempt to make herself feel more embedded in Sera’s history, more Seran than the humans who’d long since discarded their monarchies. You know that’s not true, Myrrah. You know all about your origins. But this is no time to argue that with you.”
- Adam Fenix’s thoughts (The Slab – Chapter 4)
Myrrah is not a Locust. Myrrah is not Lambent. Myrrah is not royalty by succession; she has taken the title of Queen for herself. Myrrah possesses knowledge that allows her to create Drones, something that no other human on Sera has. Taking what we know so far, we can deduce who she must be.
Locust are the offspring of Lambent humans, but considering the high infertility rate caused by lambency, breeding is difficult. In order to process humans and create more Locust large numbers and careful planning is required – humanoid Locust must be bred just like all the other beast-like Locust they command. Myrrah is in possession of knowledge that no-one else has – how to create Locust. The only people who knew how to do this were those who worked at New Hope. The scientists of New Hope moved to Mount Kadar. Myrrah’s palace is at Mount Kadar. Myrrah is not a Locust.
Therefore, Myrrah is a descendant of the scientists of New Hope, imbibed with the knowledge of how to create Locust, her people, her children, whom she was born and raised with deep under the earth. She considers herself a Locust, not a human, and she has taken the title of Queen and the cause of vengeance to fight for a race that was literally forced underground.