Ahh, this is an interesting topic. I actually think the Queen is highly underrated; I am generally very pro-Woosley, but I honestly think it's mostly his fault. She sounds like a hysterical bitch in his translation, rather than the regal-if-batshit monarch I envision her to be. That characterization appears a bit more clearly in the translation.
I personally like the theory that the Queen was exposed to Lavos without initially understanding what Lavos is, exactly. Every other major character has some kind of warning before they encounter Lavos directly; CML see the tape of Lavos' destruction, and the Zeal children and Gurus witness the fate of their mother. I always imagined that Zeal made contact with Lavos when her defenses were down... not precisely because of the fate of her husband, as has been suggested -- though that
does explain her obsession with immortality -- but moreso because she had no idea what she was getting into. Like all Zealians, she was curious and believed that any aspect of the world could be understood, explored, used for the better good. After that, I envision her having a Lovecraftian experience of exposure to something unfathomably alien and menacing and slowly going insane.
The Japanese translation seems to tip the scales in favor of her having lived somewhat:
The Black Omen is gone, and so too was
that woman at long last able to settle into slumber.
She was able to turn back into being a person...
'Slumber' could easily mean death, of course, but 'turning back into a person' doesn't suggest death.
