Changeling Hive Concepts

I've been working on developing some ideas for Changelings flavor-wise. How the Hive works, the power structure, chain of command, etc. You don't have to use it or exactly how it's written but it's my own headcanon on what Changelings lives are like in their hives. Maybe you can use it to help you with flavor in your own world-building.

The ideas themselves come from building on what the Changelings have been canonically shown to be like in the show, and filling in gaps based on actual insects like wasps or ants.

That being said, here it is! Enjoy!

Changeling Hive Concepts

It's like all of my head canon, put into a document. I love it.

I like what you did with the whoe royalty angle, with the competition and the inclusion of the Elites(Something that makes a heck of a lot of sense for this type of tribe). Also the Cradle Snatcher was an interesting thoery.

Overall great work!(Will try and do an indepth comment later if I get time.)

I actually had an idea for an interesting take on changeling Princes. Basically inspired by two songs.

Prince Charmless

Jar of Hearts


Basically, the idea is that a changeling Prince will leave the hive to more or less strike out on his own and infiltrate the society of other races. He might take a few drones or soldiers to guard and care for him, but its still a small group for infiltration work.

Once he infiltrates, he goes about basically acting like a playboy and creating (false) friendships with his victims. He'll try to establish himself in an influential position and date as many females (or males if he adopts a female disguise) to absorb their love.

Unlike changeling females, the prince stores most of his harvested love and puts them in "jars" to store them for later. These jars can then be shared with other changelings. So prince with a bunch of servants can constantly go on "dates" to harvest love, then return to store that love into jars or share with his servants.

The princes primary goal is to collect as many "jars of hearts" (or stolen love) as possible so that he can find a changeling Queen to gift them to. If his gift pleases his Queen, she would then marry him and he would attain greater power and command over more servants and other changelings.

Basically, the changeling Prince infiltrates an area alone, gathers a supply of love, creates connections and gathers intel to better facilitate an invasion. The Queens command the hives of changelings while the Princes infiltrate areas and make it easier for the hive to invade. Like mosquitoes, the Prince is largely harmless in that he doesn't kill his victims, but the changeling Queen has a voratious and insatiable appetite since she uses her energy to lay hundreds of eggs for the hive.


A changeling prince who goes for too long without feeding on love will develop flu-like symptoms and grow cold as the "ice in his soul" becomes more pronounced.

Personally I prefer my changelings a little more like Carni's Changeling concepts; queens being the only reproductive ones and the rest of the hive being androgynous elites, drones, or hypnotized non-changelings. Not terribly fond of the idea of 'princes,' but to each their own.

As I mentioned in the document itself, at least in my version, the Queen does not lay hundreds of eggs. She barely even gets close to ten. The Changeling drones lay their own eggs which are communally raised and this is where the majority of a hive's population comes from.

The main reason I chose to go that route instead of the more bug-like "Queen lays all the eggs" is because Chrysalis looks and acts precisely nothing at all like an egg-laying Queen. If she were the only member of the hive able to reproduce and was the sole source of changeling eggs, frankly she'd never leave the hive. Even if she wanted to, she'd be physically incapable of doing so. An actual insect queen is MUCH larger than any of her drones in all the wrong ways and nearly immobile because of it, spending pretty much 100% of each day laying around eating food the drones bring to her and laying eggs. Additionally, even if by some miracle Chrysalis' rail-thin body could somehow produce hundreds of eggs a day and still allow her to move, she'd STILL never leave the hive because even a 1% chance of death is too high when you're the sole source of the hive's entire population. That's why egg-laying queens tend to hide in the absolute deepest depths of their hives in real insect populations.

Additionally, at least within this concept, Princes are the sons of the active Queen so them courting the Queen is just...wrong. And as for them courting another hives Queen, the hives all have different political relationships with each other. It's entirely possible that the nearest other hive might have a "Kill-on-sight" policy towards changelings from his hive. The doc even says that a changeling can often find themselves even less welcome in a hive that isn't his own than any other race. It's POSSIBLE if the two different hives have good relationships with each other, but ultimately unlikely enough that it wouldn't be anywhere near a Prince's first choice. Princes and Princesses find their mates within the drone population of their own hive, usually from among the elites.

A prince or princess isn't a job in itself here it's a rank like in an army, though one that's hereditary.

Like I said though this is all just my version of it and you're free to view changelings however you like. No one's saying you HAVE to use my version of the changelings.