Xena’s perspective: Addressing suicidal ideation and self-sacrifice in the show and how it pertains to Xena’s character and her agency in the narrative of AFIN.
I think it’s time to talk about it. A discussion I’ve been putting off for a long time now. Xena and Gabrielle from Xena’s perspective. And this is going to be so difficult for me because Xena’s perspective is my perspective. But I would be lying to myself and to all of you if I said that this isn’t the real reason why I love ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ and Xena and Gabrielle so god damn much as well as why I actually like and appreciate the endgame.
Let’s just say it and rip the band aid off now shall we?
Xena was suicidal. She was deeply suicidal all the way through the TV show and that’s partly why the ending makes sense and it is a good ending even if it’s not a happy ending. ‘A Friend In Need’ is a huge hard pill to swallow and I understand that. But to say it’s wrong or inconsistent in terms of character representation and development is not accurate. It’s logical not just to the character but to also the lore around the character. It’s just very difficult to admit that because it’s not what we wanted to see happen to her. We wanted to see Xena forgive herself. We wanted her to essentially heal and recover from this tortured depressed state she’d been in all through her life. We wanted to see her be happy and live out the rest of her days with Gabrielle by her side. We wanted to see them both survive the trauma of being battle-hardened through pain and grief and war.
We didn’t want to see them separated from each other.
But that just was never the way it was supposed to go down and there’s glaring hints and comments through the show that Xena expected she’d die early and with a sword in her hand. She’d die a heroes death even if she didn’t particularly consider herself a ‘hero’ at any point.
From a spiritual standpoint - she was the one to die first as she was going to be the one reincarnated first into the next life as Aminestra: The Mother of Peace. A role that required her to be passive, influential and wise like her beloved mentor and her first female lover, Lao Ma. That was her karma. I’ve spoken about that before but I’ve never really gone into why that it matters based on the way that I interpret and therefore understand Xena personally and fundamentally. That of the character and the show and the role-reversal transition between Xena and Gabrielle that I go into great depth explaining in my character study thesis. That they’re fated by their very own soul to become each other in terms of the role they play in their next lives. Peacemaker and a heroic warrior.
From a realistic standpoint - Xena was very mentally ill in terms of how she regarded herself because of being the murderer and the destroyer in her past as Evil Xena. That guilt would never wash away from her psyche no matter what she did or who she would become. It was just ingrained into her permanently in that life and she would always doom herself by the narrative regardless of what happened and how events would play out. So the endgame for Xena would have always ended up this way in her mind because she could never release herself from the shackles and chains of her own self-made and controlled prison. So regardless of the plot, Xena would have always made the decision to self-sacrifice for the greater good because that was her way of taking herself out. That was her suicidal ideation and obsession. Self-sacrifice is just a noble and useful way to kill yourself. And it doesn’t matter whether it was in Japan, Greece, the Norselands or anywhere else on the planet, Xena would have always chosen the self-sacrifice route and there was nothing that Gabrielle could do to deter her from that. The only thing Gabrielle could really do about it was to just tag along and be there for the ride of it all. That’s IF Xena would let her. The gods know Xena tried insurmountable times to leave Gabrielle behind every time she either went on one of her suicidal missions or she was trying to prevent Gabrielle from dying with her.
It’s realistic because it’s honest. I’ve never been suicidal myself but I have felt worthless and valueless in my life and have also treated people like garbage because of it just the same as Xena did. It was never to that extreme, of course, but sometimes it did feel like that and that’s what I try to always remember. In fact I have a mantra of sorts for that. I always say ‘It’s not what it is, it’s how it feels that matters’ because that’s what needs to be understood about the subjective experience of reality. That it is not ever objective. It’s always subjective. How it FEELS is the only experience you can have of reality.
That’s what EXPERIENCE is. That’s what REALITY is.
So for Xena - how she felt and all that was going on in her mind at every moment is how she experienced her reality. It’s ironic because she is a very objective person when it comes to others. But when it’s herself, all she saw, heard and felt was filtered through the mentality that she was evil and she had to atone for her evil sins.
Gabrielle was the only person in her entire life that was able to settle that constant mentality if not dismantle it.
When she was with Gabrielle she was happy. Happy enough that sometimes she let herself forget about it. And if she had been a cursed ensouled vampire…, she would have lost her soul every second she saw Gabrielle because love and light was always her experience with that little blonde bard by her side. She expressed that as often as she could because it was a solid truth to her.
Xena loved Gabrielle so much for the love and light she brought to her self-contemptuous and dark psyche but she was damaged beyond repair ultimately. There was no cure for what she was going through inside herself.
And as awful and painful as it is to see, I respect the honesty and realism of that storytelling in a fantasy.
‘AFIN’ hurts like a bastard but it makes sense to her and to anybody that relates to or resonates with her reality.
I don’t talk about whether she deserved to live because I believe she did. I only ever talk about why SHE didn’t believe she did and the agency of choosing not to stay alive because she was never doomed by the narrative.
She doomed herself by it. The narrative of suicidality.
To her what mattered was she had redeemed herself in death if she always felt that she could not do so in life.
Her ultimate redemption was not in choosing to stay dead. It was in choosing to give up her happiness with Gabrielle until the next life when they would swap over roles and she would no longer be tormented by illness.
Lucy Lawless once said that she believed there was an underlying message to the theme of redemption in the show and talked about how it’s what informs Xena and the decisions she makes as a warrior in dutiful thrall to the greater good. That it was even an addiction for her.
Self-worth. Not so much that it should be achieved because how does one with a tortured soul even do that? But that it should be acknowledged as part of a story about REDEMPTION because it’s a loaded story when done correctly. XENA was done correctly in the sense of how well it represented and developed all its characters even if you don’t believe that all of the main characters’ ending storylines were good or conclusive.
As I said - subjective reality is all you can experience.
What lies beyond the subjective is something we’ll never know because that’s not the way reality works. And it’s certainly not how it does for the mentally ill - which in itself is an entirely misunderstood subject as far as how one that is should be viewed and treated.
Someone that lives by their own mentality.
Even if it’s not the truth of who they are.
That’s Xena. That’s always been Xena and her theme of redemption in love as if she’s thematically symbolic of Jesus. Died, resurrected, died again and then made a guardian of peace and justice through reincarnation.
Her perspective of everything is not the one you understand because it’s not the one you’re given.
Remember it’s Gabrielle who wrote The Xena Scrolls and the show is the scrolls. Every aspect of it is told through the lens of an author who is in love with the lead protagonist and therefore has all the power and authority of how the story of Xena SHOULD BE told.
But ultimately LOVE is sacrifice. Especially for Xena and Gabrielle. So Gabrielle had to be honest in ‘AFIN’.
No matter which way she wanted the narrative, Xena’s choice and wish was to sacrifice herself within her love for everyone who she originally condemned to torment.
We don’t like it but that is what ultimately redeemed her because it’s the one thing a person like her accepts.
It was the only way she would allow herself redemption.
I’m thankful for at least she was able to live somewhat of a happy life with the love of her life up until this point even if she would always commit herself to her service. There’s no greater hero than a hero who won’t waiver themselves from their conviction to the greater good but they don’t have to condemn themselves to pain all the time. They are allowed to live a life of love and light.
The question really is WILL THEY allow themselves to at any point and can WE really blame THEM if they don’t?
Being a stranger in a world that Xena has helped turn to stone, it’s a wonder she has any will to stay alive for any period of time. If not for Xena meeting Gabrielle when and where she did, it’s very likely that she’d have killed herself right then and there because she was at such a low point at the beginning of the TV show, she was in no stable mental state to continue on with her journey into becoming the Warrior Princess that would recognize a soul that claimed to feel just as empty inside eventually.
There’s a lot about Xena and Gabrielle’s lives before they meet each other that mirrors the other and that is what fundamentally bonded them to one another. The queer narrative of being an outsider in their own home.
If there’s one thing real queer people share between them it’s that pain of never feeling safe and like we belong in an environment that’s supposed to defend and protect us from harm. That’s supposed to love us. That’s a level of queer storytelling that never quite hits in other shows claiming to represent real queer people.
But by the gods does that storytelling work and hit in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ from the very first episode of it.
That’s just the premise of it though. These two amazing women go to lengths for each other that can only really be truly explored through a romantic interpretation and I’m so very glad that they decided to do that with them because so much in the storytelling is emphasised x100 when it’s viewed and understood as queer storytelling.
It just wouldn’t feel quite as deep and intense if it was anything less than an epic love story or epic romance and the ending only really hurts so much because of it.
Otherwise I think we’d be able to accept it as a fandom because at the end of the day it was just being honest that Xena wouldn’t have let it be any other way for her because she was never able to kick the nasty habit of throwing her life away and I completely understand it.
I don’t like it, of course. But I do understand it and her. Unfortunately, I always will because I’ve been there too.
I wish I could agree with you guys that it was the wrong endgame for Xena but I understand her far too much to and I understand that Gabrielle loved her far too much to not respect the informed decision she had made to sacrifice herself for the final time for the greater good.
