It seems that one of the Maerc vacuum drones somehow got switched on during the fight. The design with the "lamp eyes" was a bit inspired by this. (And here I was thinking about this scene too.)
Oh, Peter is perfectly aware that she is a literal queen. He just finds it a bit off-putting that this means that her boyfriend Dolon is completely at the mercy of her whim. (He emancipates from that at the end of the story...)
(Let's hope that Hades doesn't already have a dinner reservation for Dolon...)