In the Alien universe, there is a xenomorph king
The Alien universe leans heavily on insect biology, and insects come in a lot of different flavors. Bees and ants don't have kings, but termites do, and their king lives with the queen for decades without ever leaving the chamber.
That little entomological loophole has fueled a fan theory for years: somewhere deep in the hive, something bigger than a Praetorian and even the Queen herself might be lurking.
Leaks for the 2v8 mode in Dead by Daylight reignited the debate after a skin labeled "King" showed up alongside the Xenomorph.
A massive crowned skull, an extra tail, a silhouette towering over the standard Queen – the real question wasn't the skin itself, but where this thing even came from, and that turned out to be the more interesting part, as discussed on Reddit.
The most common answer people give is actually wrong. They're thinking of Aliens: Rogue, a Dark Horse comic from 1993 where a mad scientist named Ernst Kleist grows a human-Xenomorph hybrid aboard Charon Station and names his creation the King himself.
The hybrid turned out to be an uncontrollable berserker – indifferent to humans, but savagely hostile toward its own kind. The Queen eventually tore it apart. A failed experiment with a grand title, basically.
The real King showed up much later and through a completely different line of lore. Prodos Games introduced it in an expansion for the Aliens vs Predator tabletop wargame, The Hunt Begins (2015), where it appears as a natural apex defender that emerges once a colony grows large enough.
That's also where the collectible statues and tabletop RPG mentions trace back to – essentially the whole visual foundation behind the Dead by Daylight skin.
The actual role of a King is where fans disagree. If a Praetorian acts as the Queen's bodyguard, then the King is left with either the job of field commander stepping in when the swarm starts losing, or guardian of egg-laying sites in remote parts of the hive.
Funny enough, the idea isn't new. One of the discarded scripts for Alien 3 featured a king that cleared out territory and gathered hosts for the Queen's first batch of eggs.
And in a Marvel crossover, the Red Skull merged with a Queen and became the Red King, which technically counts too.
