Xena/Gabrielle

Xena/Gabrielle is the femslash ship between Xena and Gabrielle from the Xena: Warrior Princess fandom.

The Show
Season One

Xena and Gabrielle meet each other for the first time when Xena saves the people of Potadia from the warlord Draco. Gabrielle is immediately smitten and attempts to follow Xena out of town when the other villagers, knowing her reputation as a ruthless killer, demand that she move on. Xena is jaded and prefers to travel alone, but Gabrielle trails her. She is committed to proving to Xena that they need each other. She even saves Xena’s life by thinking on her feet and keeping her cool under pressure so that Xena finally, grudgingly feels compelled to hear her out. When Xena threatens to send her back home, Gabrielle immediately replies, “I won’t stay there,” and makes an impassioned plea to Xena to allow her to accompany her on adventures. Xena is moved by this, and she finally agrees to accept Gabrielle into her life. For both of them, this proves to be the most important decision either of them would ever make.

During the time Xena and Gabrielle go to Athens, this is the first time Gabrielle and Xena get separated. While away, Gabrielle realizes that she misses Xena. After being accepted to the Athens Academy, in part because she puts into practice what she has begun to learn from Xena, she turns down the offer and rejoins Xena. Their relationship gets closer and closer at this point, with Gabrielle starting to notice Xena's attractiveness as she points out to her at one point: "By the Gods... You are beautiful." Also, although Gabrielle does not want to interfere with the reunion Xena has with her father, she does, however, stand up to Xena during her "relapse" into war-like ways. This is twice now that Gabrielle is the sole factor for bringing Xena back to her senses.

During the Season One finale, as soon as Xena believes that Gabrielle died, she snaps, showing emotions that she has never shown in the show up until that point. Since she thought she had lost Gabrielle, that shows just how important the both became to one another.

Season Two

Season Two further confirms the scope and depth of the relationship between Gabrielle and Xena. In the first episode, they have their first time having a disagreement of any depth. The request that Gabrielle makes for no more secrets, however, is most significant, and it foreshadows things to come. In the second episode, Xena sacrifices the life of her brother to rescue Gabrielle, which once again shows how much Xena has come to value Gabrielle. They also become emotionally closer as Gabrielle feels comfortable in consoling Xena with physical touch in "Giant Killer".

There's also an occurrence that strains their relationship in "Return of Callisto". There are two things going on here. One is Gabrielle's abandonment of Xena at a time of pretty high crisis (the release of Callisto, to date, Xena's most fearsome foe), and Xena's willingness to let Gabrielle go. Callisto is quick to use this separation to her advantage. While other villains and enemies of Xena, including Ares, somehow seem to dismiss Gabrielle's importance to Xena, Callisto never fails to use it to her advantage. This deep bond between Xena and Gabrielle is confirmed by the series when it's stated that Gabrielle and Xena's descendants will feel the strength of that bond, and that is perhaps one of the most definitive examples given in the series of the fact that Xena and Gabrielle are soulmates.

This season is pretty significant as well because during "The Quest", Xena and Gabrielle share their very first scene, although not in their own bodies, due to the censorship of LGBT+ couples that was going on at that time in television. So Xena possesses Autholicous's body, and while she's "inside" his body, Xena goes in for a kiss, after Gabrielle tells her that she has so many things that she wants to talk about with her. Just before Xena and Gabrielle's lips touch, the shot switches to Gabrielle and Autholicous kissing, with Xena being inside his body. Gabrielle doesn't seem at all surprised by this kiss, meaning they were definitely on the same page with Xena. Although Autholicous does seem confused, since he wasn't in control of his own body.

The remainder of Season Two, continues to develop and shape their relationship. And it shows that wherever Xena goes, so goes Gabrielle. Now, they are inseparable. In "The Price", Xena's dark side gets explored, when she's put in charge of an army and war, much to the dismay of Gabrielle. But in the end, Gabrielle manages to bring Xena back. At the end of the episode, Xena almost tells Gabrielle that she loves her.

Season Three

While Aries is working with the furies to try and take Xena down, Gabrielle stands by Xena's side no matter what. Also, when Xena is imprisoned, Gabrielle tells Xena that she loves her. Later on, in episode 4, Gabrielle's life changes forever when Dayhawk, the One Evil God, impregnates Gabrielle with Hope, his one daughter and representative on Earth. Xena is there for the birth and tries to be supportive as much as she can. However, she's very suspicious of the baby, which does turn out to be evil, causing Xena to want to destroy it. Gabrielle gets really attached to the baby, so this causes quite some tension between her and Xena. So Gabrielle ends up running away and sending the baby away to keep her safe and away from Xena. This becomes one of the very first reasons to cause this amount of tension between Gabrielle and Xena, as nothing has done before.

But this gets even more complicated by the fact that Xena has a son, Solan, reintroduced this season in “Maternal Instincts.” Raised by centaurs, Solan is doomed never to know his mother well. Almost as soon as he reappears, he’s killed by Hope, Gabrielle's daughter. Following his murder, Xena becomes a vengeful mother, pressuring Gabrielle into killing Hope as retribution. The couple’s rift seems insurmountable, until a musical episode, “The Bitter Suite,” where Xena and Gabrielle are thrown into an alternate reality and reevaluate their commitments to one another.

Following their mutual bereavement over the death of their children, the pair become addicted to danger and self-sacrifice. In the episodes following “The Bitter Suite,”  in “One Against an Army” and “Tsunami,” they repeatedly profess their love for one another, as they are threatened, first by the entire Syrian Army and then a flood. One is always trying to die to save the other, or the world, or a village. When the action slows, they remember their heartbreak and have a very tender and intimate moment between them.

During the ending of Season Three, Hope and Xena have a showdown. And in the end, Gabrielle sacrifices herself to save Xena from having to kill Hope because fate decrees that if Xena kills Hope, she will end up killing herself. Once again, the depth of their relationship is shown with Gabrielle willing to put everything on the line for Xena.

Season Four

The season starts with Xena trying to find Gabrielle in death, and that concept is a recurring one in this series. Xena ends up in the Amazon Land of Death where she meets up with an old ally of hers, now an enemy, who plagues Xena with visions of her and Gabrielle being crucified. Xena decides to keep this to herself, to spare Gabrielle of this knowledge. When the two of them finally reunite, it's very emotional.

In “The Ides of March,” the villainous Callisto teams up with Xena’s cruel ex Caesar to usurp the rulership of Rome from its tenuous democracy. Despite the visions Xena has seen, when Gabrielle is captured, she feels she has no choice. They nearly escape, but she is paralyzed by Callisto in the middle of a fight to free Caesar’s prisoners. Gabrielle spent much of the last season on a quest for peace, but when she sees Xena fall, she does not hesitate to unleash her full rage on the Roman guards. She fights valiantly while Xena begs her not to, fearing the cost to Gabrielle’s spirit. After they are both captured, they are imprisoned together and sentenced to death. When Xena weakly apologizes to Gabrielle, asking her forgiveness for making her break her vow of non-violence, Gabrielle insists that it’s meaningless, as nothing has ever mattered to her besides her life with Xena. The two of them are crucified together, and they die gazing into each other’s eyes. Though they return to life in the next season, we see that even in death, their souls were just as intertwined as their lives had become, once again proving they're soulmates.

In the Season's finale, "Deja Vu All Over Again", Xena and Gabrielle reunite in a modern setting, as a sort of reincarnation situation. But, in line with the censorship of LGBT+ relationships, Xena returns as a man, which is relevant to the scene that happens between them during the course of the episode. As a series of flashbacks of all the moments Gabrielle and Xena spend together start appearing in Gabrielle's mind, she says: "I remember when we saw each other for the first time. Xena, life is eternal. It doesn't have a beginning or ending. The friends we meet along the way, come back to us over and over again. We never die, because we are never truly born."

- Gabrielle

Gabrielle tells Xena that a lot of time has passed. Which Xena agrees with, saying that indeed that's the case. And then, the two of them kiss passionately.

Season Five

As Xena and Gabrielle arrive in heaven, a battle between angels and demons is headed by Callisto. Gabrielle is pulled to hell, while Xena ascends. However, Xena literally goes to hell, overcoming all obstacles, to save Gabrielle and to be with her. The healer Eli, with the unbeknownst to him help from reformed Callisto, brings Xena and Gabrielle back to life later on.

At first, following resurrection, Xena is not herself at all. The memories of being a warlord and her skill in battle are gone. Luckily, once creating a new and improved Chakram that links almost telepathically to her, Xena is back to herself again. However, she discovers that she's pregnant, although she hasn't been with anyone in an intimate capacity. That's because Callisto impregnated her to later be reincarnated in Xena's daughter's body. Gabrielle, however, gets visibly shocked to hear this, not even believing it, since Xena hasn't been with anyone but her for the longest time. But she continues to support Xena no matter what, as she has always done, believing her words about being impregnated by Callisto.

Season Six

Gabrielle is stabbed through the side by a cannibal, and she and Xena nearly drown. Xena pulls them into a watery cavern, but Gabrielle is quickly dying from the combination of her wound and the frigid water. While Xena tries to find a way to help Gabrielle out of the cave, Gabrielle stops her and tells her that she doesn’t want to be buried with the Amazons, nor with her family, but with Xena. She expresses guilt over their situation, but Xena argues that it’s her own fault for setting her on a path she was never meant to walk. Shivering from the cold and afraid of death, Gabrielle says that any path she walked would have always led to Xena. Then Xena straight up carries Gabrielle up the side of a cliff in the rain. Then she takes on a group of cannibals to save her.

Later on in the season, it's revealed that Xena had once trapped a great monster with the help of a mystical ring. They meet Beowolf, who tells them that the cage has been broken and the monster roams free. Xena departs in the night, leaving a letter for Gabrielle that pleads with her not to follow. Naturally, Gabrielle does not heed this, and goes right after Xena.

The ring can be worn only by someone who has forsaken love, as Xena did in her past, or by someone with great love whose love will soon be taken from them. When Xena puts on the ring, she defeats the beast, but she loses all memory of Gabrielle. Meanwhile, the Valkyrie Brunnhilde confesses to Gabrielle that she’s in love with her, while Gabrielle has to decline her advances in favor of her love for Xena. Gabrielle finds herself trapped in a ring of fire, and only her true soulmate can brave the flames to free her. Even without her memories, Xena gravitates towards Gabrielle and awakens her with a kiss.

In "Many Happy Returns", Xena buys tickets for Gabrielle's birthday to go and see Sappho. And she even gets Sappho to write a poem for Gabrielle, which she then gives to her. Furthermore, at the end of the episode, Xena pops on the helmet of Hermes and flies around holding Gabrielle in her arms.

Fanon
Xena/Gabrielle was on of the earliest major femslash ships. As Xena was airing during the early days of internet fandom. On AO3, Xena/Gabrielle is the most written ship for both Xena and Gabrielle. It is also the most written ship in the Xena: Warrior Princess tag.

Fandom
FAN FICTION