fuck it more igneel agenda posting
'irene is as strong as igneel'
so looking strictly at canon, igneel is an entirely different weight class than irene
both irene and august are considerably weaker than zeref, both narratively and feats wise (zeref is the emperor of a nation ruled by strength, he has demonstrated superior enchantment skills to irene herself, he's stated to be the strongest wizard in human history, etc)
then you have both their statements of zeref possibly being able to challenge acnologia once he acquires the fairy heart (which reinforces that zeref is superior to them as they are considering fairy heart being used by zeref as their best chance against acnologia)
now zeref himself thinks that even with the fairy heart it would still be a losing effort, but its reasonable to say fairy heart zeref is at least within the scope of acnologia's power
now igneel, half dead, was handing acnologia's ass to him before he began to get gassed from having his soul damaged and being asleep for so long, and even then he was able to rip acnologia's arm off
ontop of that, just a sliver of his dying magic was enough to let natsu fight zeref on equal footing
so your power ranking narratively would look like:
irene=<august<<<<zeref<<<<fairy heart zeref/half dead igneel=<acnologia
"oh but zeref said acnologia wasn't truly challenged"
well that's objectively bullshit. acnologia got his ass knocked out for a solid minute and only gained the upper hand when igneel began to wane. if zeref expects me to believe acnologia just let his arm get ripped off because he wasn't actually trying against igneel, then that's nonsensical
"but acnologia got stronger after killing igneel so irene would've faced a stronger acnologia"
not only did irene not 'face' acnologia, her first move against him was literally a get the fuck away from me spell where the manipulated the geography of fiore just put distance between her and him, here is mashima himself saying a non-weakened hypothetical prime igneel is = to acnologia
you even got ignia like a hundred chapters later claiming that before acnologia, igneel was the strongest dragon around
igneel was considered by other actual dragons to be the actual king of the fire dragons
for all we know irene literally just called herself queen one day
don't you dare compare her fraud ass to my glorious king again you sock ironing fuck