INTRODUCTION

The late 1990s television series Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001) chronicled the adventurous of a mythical ancient Greek warrior woman, Xena. She was unusual among sword-and-sandal heroes not only for her gender but also for her lack of any long-term heterosexual relationship and for her sexually active lifestyle. Xena's characterization in turn helped pave the way for more complex and proactive female characters in the modern “golden age” of televisual and cinematic historical and fantasy dramas.

The small subfield of “Xena studies” has extensively analyzed Xena's depiction as mother, as action heroine, and as half of a possible implicit same-sex relationship with her companion, Gabrielle. However, no scholarship has yet considered the precedent Xena set as a trendsetting archetype of a sexually active, polyamorous woman whose romantic decisions do not mark her as immoral or deviant. Other characters within the series, such as Xena's look-alikes Meg, Diana, and Leah, each represent different sexual lifestyle and relationship choices, all of which are eventually respected by the other characters. Despite their campy origins and convoluted plot twists, these stories of Xena have helped reshape the notion of what women might do and with whom in the ancient world. They offered new and complicated models of heroism and morality that more closely paralleled those of traditional male protagonists in films and television about the ancient world.

Xena's creators, Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and John Schulian, as well as the actress Lucy Lawless herself, explicitly represented her as a polyamorous and desirous woman throughout the series. She was initially depicted as a “bad girl” and exhibits many of the traits of the wicked woman in classical cinema – promiscuity, greed, and lack of maternal instinct. Through Xena's encounters with her comrades Hercules and Gabrielle, she ultimately finds redemption and remakes herself as a heroine. However, she notably never embraces celibacy or settles down with any one particular romantic partner. Xena thus offers a new model of mythical heroine that rejects both the wicked seductresses and the virginal damsels or widows of earlier cinematic incarnations.