If one player had a 1-2 season stretch where they reached a level nobody else could match, I would consider them greater than someone who was slightly worse at their peak but stayed elite for 15 years and accumulated more records and trophies.
Once there, a queen has only two options: take a king's board under her wing — guiding it, protecting it, accelerating its own transformation — or face another queen, as an equal, in a contest between two fully realized powers.