You know, I never actually made that connection. Reuel is basically Tolkien in the Dresdenverse (although the actual Tolkien may be a different guy). Uriel specifically leaves a LOTR book out for Dresden in SmF. If Reuel is actually Tolkien...well, I don't know where to go with that but it's really neat.

I think you're missing the point--the positions are explicitly referred to as: The Queen that Was, the Queen that Is and the Queen that Will Be. Why would the Mother be the Queen that Was if she never, well, Was? I agree that she doesn't necessarily have to have been Queen to be the original Mother, but this represents an in-universe oddity if there is no explanation for why the Queens are referred to in this way in Summer Knight. There's a qualitative difference between that and the relationship of a Prince to a King in a Kingdom's hierarchy.

I've also wondered about the previous Winter Ladies--especially since we have a gaping period of around ~800 years where Maeve probably wasn't in that seat, and moreover Mab was busy being Queen. "In Mab's time," is a bit vague of a descriptor for when the last Winter Lady died (Mab's time as Queen? Mab's time in existence?) but I'm going to toss out a wild guess: Was it, perhaps, another of Titania's daughters? Mab had twins, it would be oddly symmetrical if Titania did as well...and that like Sarissa leaving her mother by chance to be Lady of an opposite court...so did Titania's other daughter. Perhaps killed by a Starborn?

Quoting myself here, since I had a very similar idea. There's no direct evidence that Titania had twins, but consider this: People who are twins are also genetically more likely to have twins themselves. Titania and Mab were twins. With fae themes of Balance and Symmetry being so important, it does seem very possible that both Titania and Mab had the same number of daughters---and even twins.

Unknown number of hosts to the Order of Blackened Denarius

About covers that the first two pieces. As for the rest, this file is intended to be based on what the Council reasonably knows. The whole incident with Hades isn't necessarily something they'd be privy to--or failing that, the fact that Harry got to shake hands with Hades at least. The episode might become common knowledge with the spreading news of Nic breaking his word...

There's a mild kink to be worked out here: If Mab has been Mab for better than a thousand years, and she ascended around the Battle of Hastings...well, a thousand years haven't passed yet since Hastings. Should we take this arbitrary number of 1000+ years loosely? Otherwise the numbers just don't work and we cannot say that the Mantles changed hands at this time.

I've always been interested as to what could have caused the divide between Mab and Titania, twin sisters, on a personal level. Ascending to the the Winter & Summer thrones itself doesn't feel like it's enough for enmity between them. The Ladies communicated frequently as seen with Lily and Maeve and the Mothers seem to share a body of knowledge (perhaps intellectus). Bit of a gap here between the Queens. The last Queens actually died, and Titania holds her role specifically to protect mortals from Mab--and this leads me to believe that, in conjunction with the changing of the Outer-Gate guard situation--that there is something buried beneath the surface.

I've also wondered about the previous Winter Ladies--especially since we have a gaping period of around ~800 years where Maeve probably wasn't in that seat, and moreover Mab was busy being Queen. "In Mab's time," is a bit vague of a descriptor for when the last Winter Lady died (Mab's time as Queen? Mab's time in existence?) but I'm going to toss out a wild guess: Was it, perhaps, another of Titania's daughters? Mab had twins, it would be oddly symmetrical if Titania did as well...and that like Sarissa leaving her mother by chance to be Lady of an opposite court...so did Titania's other daughter. Perhaps killed by a Starborn?