As it is in real life, so it is w/ SEO... Behind every powerful man (king) is a good woman (queen) making him who he has become. While content is great (king), it's generally worthless without the links (queen).
You can also think of SEO as a real estate. If you build an horrible "house" (your website) and all your neighbors (incoming links) are "abandoned houses" (crappy sites) and "crack houses" (spammers) your "property" will never be worth anything (no rankings). If you build a beautiful, well decorated, with lot of amenities "house" (your site) in a great big city neighborhood (lots of quality incoming links) where all your neighbors are "commercial buildings" (authority sites) and beautiful mansions (high PR links) than your investment will only grow (high rankings)!
I think natural links can be called as queen. People basically have to concentrate only on generating useful and informative content, in return, natural links are generated. Useful content attracts natural links.
I agree with informixx. Try and search Google for USED COPIER SEATTLE. The site that shows up number one and two have a fraction of the links that number three have. But, a closer look at the links and you will find that they together are from high rank sites that are pointing one way without recipical linking. Links are KING and the clculation of links may also be a part of why a site with no content to speak of ranks so well.
Content is king but links are queen i agree because both are required for getting website ranking good.