Angels and Warriors
K. Stoddard Hayes delves into Xena’s psyche to investigate whether she follows the way of peace or the way of war.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 11
Peace does not make exciting drama. A big fight is much more exciting and dramatic than a tea party, and so battle and war have always been the staples of adventure film and television. Which is why it is so remarkable to find that a television series called Xena: Warrior Princess has as its most important dramatic theme the conflict between war and peace, violence and pacifism.
It's a conflict built into the very nature of the two protagonists: Xena the warrior fleeing from her violent past, Gabrielle the Bard who all her life has been drawn to the way of the Peacemaker. Their friendship and the events of their lives dramatise many of the choices individuals make in the search for peace and justice.
After years as a notorious warlord, responsible for thousands of deaths, Xena reaches a turning point at which she must ask herself what is the role of the warrior in the struggle for good and for justice? The simplest answer seems to be: to fight for justice and to defend the innocent and helpless. For the next four years, Xena spends most of her time using everything she knows of war to thwart the work of the warlords. Yet that’s not a choice that sits easily with her, especially considering her bloody history. In Sins of the Past and Remember Nothing, she tries to renounce war altogether, to bury her weapons, or to live the life she should have had as a village girl, not a warrior. Each time, she is confronted by violence and injustice, and the only way she knows to stop them is to fight the oppressors. Her glimpse of a future life in which she is known as “The Mother of Peace” makes her wonder yet again whether she is on the right path, and only the affirmation of Krishna that she is meant to be a warrior reassures her.
We see what Xena would be if she were not a warrior in Chakram. Returned from death without her will to fight, she is helpless in any physical conflict, and not only that, she is genuinely horrified by the life of violence and war which her friends tell her is her birthright. Again and again, she asks whether it’s right to make her into a warrior again, a woman who can kill. Yet even Eli, the apostle of peace, is certain that Xena must be restored to her old self to complete the miracle that revived her. This Xena may be confused about who she is supposed to be, yet she still has the wisdom to give Joxer sound romantic advice, and the courage to protect Amarice from Kal and his warriors, by using her own body as a shield. These are qualities that we might expect to see in the Mother of Peace. It’s not, after all, her fighting ability that makes Xena the hero she is, but her moral courage and her wisdom.
For Gabrielle, the road and the choices are far more complex. She has always been drawn to the way of the peacemaker, and after a few tentative brushes with swordplay, decides that she’d prefer less violent way of defending herself. Her ideals are put to the test when Callisto murders her bridegroom, Perdicus. Raging for revenge, Gabrielle insists that Xena teach her to handle a sword, so she can kill Callisto herself. She actually gets past Callisto's defences and has the hated warrior at her mercy, but her conscience takes over. No matter how much Callisto deserves to die, no matter that Callisto will repay her mercy by killing her, Gabrielle can't bring herself to kill.
Gabrielle’s first encounters with the cult of Dahak and with Najara feed her desire to explore the way of the peacemaker. The priest of Dahak presents his cult as a monotheistic religion of peace, which is the evil god’s way of snaring innocent worshippers. Najara proclaims herself a servant of the Light, whose mission is to protect the innocent and to save the violent from their own violent ways. But her way is the way of coercion. Anyone who doesn’t embrace her beliefs is “given to the Light,” a euphemism for execution. Drawn to the false goodness of both of these cults, Gabrielle ends up the victim of their fanaticism.
In Eli, Gabrielle finally finds the real thing. Captivated by the beauty of his message of love, she renounces all forms of violence, throws away her staff, and declares herself a disciple of the Way of Love. Yet there are indications that this is not the right path for her. Her attempt to write a play dramatising the way of peace is a critical and artistic bomb (as I said, peace doesn’t make compelling drama). More telling is the unrealistic idealism of becoming Queen of the Amazons in time of war. Gabrielle doesn’t seem to see the inherent falsehood in leading your people into battle, while you claim to be a follower of the Way of Love, who must not strike a blow.
The capture of Xena in the Roman prison forces Gabrielle to recognise that her true way is not the way of love, but the way of friendship. Like Xena, she finds that when someone she loves is in danger, she has to fight to protect her. The way of friendship demands that she be whatever Xena needs her to be. While Xena is a mother protecting her child, what she needs is what Gabrielle becomes: another warrior to watch her back.
While Xena and Gabrielle dramatise the human struggle to choose between violence and love, the Way of War and the Way of Love are embodied by Ares and Eli, two individuals with supernatural powers and very human personalities. True to his calling as God of War, Ares glories in fighting, whether in a hand to hand brawl with his least favourite brother, Hercules, or the blood and chaos of a major battle. Like any successful general, he is as masterful at deceit and manipulation to achieve his objectives as he is at battle Everything Ares does seems to be for his own ends, whether vengeance, personal power, or the creation of a world ruled by war. Ares has plenty of physical courage and sheer nerve. Even when he is completely overmatched, as when he has lost his powers in Ten Little Warlords, or facing the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he keeps fighting because he is determined to survive and to protect the world he knows.
Eli is a very human saviour, full of human doubts. When his miraculous powers first manifest, he is overwhelmed by the burden of the message that he bears. In The Way he explains: “You know what the scariest part is? It's that I know the truth... The Truth. I've seen it. It’s as real to me as those trees are to you... Now I have this power to heal people and cast out demons and give people hope, and it terrifies me.”
Eli is no sweet, naive, spineless do-gooder. Real love is not always sweet, and it’s generally very pragmatic as well. He is gentle with those that need gentleness, and tough and fearless with those that need strength. While he respects the powers of his two immortal enemies, Ares and Indrajit the Demon King, he shows them no fear, and he sees right through their falsehoods. He knows that Indrajit’s offers of allegiance are impossible, and that Ares secretly fears him as the harbinger of the Twilight of the Gods.
Unlike the gods or a cult leader like Najara, Eli knows that each person must find his own way to truth. He never condemns Xena or Gabrielle for walking a different path than his, and even reassures Gabrielle that the Way of Love is not for everyone. He never tries to coerce or frighten anyone into following him, but only shows them the Light that he sees, and lets each individual - even Ares - make his own choice.
There is a myth upheld by warriors, politicians and patriots, that war can create peace and order. Ares tries to convince Xena that this is what he and she can do together: to create a world of order through force. And Dahak’s priests promise their followers a paradise, once Dahak has cleansed the world in the blood of the unworthy. Their words sound as sanitized and plausible as the words we use now, like “a war to end all wars,” and “making the world safe for democracy,” and “ethnic cleansing.”
The episode Armageddon Now, Part 2 gives us a graphic picture of what these promises really mean. In an alternate present in which Hercules was never born, Xena fulfills Alti’s prophecy to become the Destroyer of Nations and the ruler of the entire known world. The world she rules is more violent and cruel than our worst nightmares, a world where the only laws are fear and death; and the innocent and the brave are tortured and killed in their millions.
No single episode has yet shown us what Eli’s kingdom of love would be like. Even in Heaven, the archangels make war on the forces of Hell. In this universe, at least, it seems that the messengers of love will always need the warriors of light to protect them. Violence is an essential part of Xena's world, and it's only justifiable in the hands of the good guys, by how they use it: never to attack or conquer, but only to protect the innocent from harm. Those who fight, fight not for themselves but for others, and are willing to lay down their own lives in defence of justice and those who are defenceless.
Yet that doesn't mean that the warriors are stronger than the peacemakers. When Ares tells Eli and his followers that warriors shape the future, he's wrong. Eli’s message of love is mightier than all the gods of Olympus and all the demons of Hell. Michael and his angels might take arms against the demon armies led by Xena, but it’s the love of Callisto and Eli that saves Heaven, by returning Xena and Gabrielle to the mortal plane. Seeds of Faith presents the pivotal conflict between violence and love. Knowing that Ares plans to silence Eli by killing him, Xena and Gabrielle try to persuade him to flee, or to let them fight for him. But Eli refuses. “Love is the only weapon we need,” he proclaims. “It's a weapon the gods neither have nor understand.”
When Callisto tells him he will die, Eli is afraid, but he does not turn back from the path. Callisto reassures him, “All fear is the fear of loss, and only through that fear can we truly love.”
While Xena is determined to fight for Eli, Gabrielle believes so much in him that when he asks her to let him handle Ares alone, she obeys. “If you save my life with violence, then the future will pay the price,” he tells her. But even Gabrielle doesn't yet understand. She stands aside believing that Eli has some miracle planned to protect him, and is aghast when Ares kills him.
With Eli’s death, Xena is determined to kill Ares. “It's easy to preach peace when you live in Heaven,” she tells Callisto. “Where I come from, you’ve got to fight for what you believe in.” But when she holds the Dagger of Helios at Ares' throat, both Eli and Callisto come to her, and she understands his message at last: that all life is sacred, and that the cycle of violence can only be broken through nonviolence. She sees that Eli’s death will give his followers the faith and courage to follow his way of love. And Ares, too, finally understands this truth, all too bitterly, when he realises that if he in turn kills Xena, her death will only strengthen Eli’s cause.
With his death, Eli’s teachings spread even further. The country people of Amphipolis protect Eve from the armies of Athena, because she represents the fulfilment of Eli’s message. A generation later, the people of Eli still nurture and spread their faith in the teeth of Roman persecution.
It’s Xena’s love for Eve that saves her daughter, both by working the miracle that shows Livia the vision, and by the love the vision finally allows Livia to remember. And, of all people, it’s Ares who saves Gabrielle and Eve when they are dying, and thus preserves Eve as the Messenger of the Light.
The war over Eve finally exposes the flaw of the way of war and violence. Ironically, the God of War himself who first explains it and tells both Athena and Livia that the gods have been destroyed, not by a mortal child or a prophecy, but by their own fears. The more they try to destroy Eve and prevent the prophecy of the Twilight from being fulfilled, the more their mortal followers turn away from them, and the more of them die at the hands of Hercules and Xena and defenders of the Light.
In the end, the only gods who survive are those who acted in love despite their fears: Aphrodite, who tried to help Gabrielle, and Ares, who gave his immortality for love.
SIDEBAR: To bleed or not to bleed?
Big fights are the staple action of television adventure. No episode of Hercules or Xena is complete without at least one fight, and most have many. The spectacular stunt work, cartoon sound effects, and general absence of blood add to the television myth that no matter how big the fight, no one has really been hurt. The characters all walk away without a bruise, no matter how many blows they’ve given or taken; even the nameless bad guys usually get up and stagger away, little the worse.
In reality, of course, a man who is thrown 50 feet through the air to slam into a tree or a roof would have broken bones and severe internal injuries, if he survived at all. And if a man like Hercules, strong enough to lift a house, actually did hit someone as hard as he could on the head or the chest, he would kill them every time. A veteran warrior should be as scarred as Darphus from 10 years of battle, not, like Xena, with skin as flawless as a Vestal Virgin.
In Hooves and Harlots, Xena's writers address the myth head on, when Ephiny takes Gabrielle to the Amazon armoury to choose a weapon. Gabrielle avoids the vicious looking swords and bows, but her eyes light up when she sees the fighting staffs. Hitting someone with a staff seems a lot less violent than slashing or stabbing them. She even thinks it’s fun to work out with the staff, until Ephiny gives her a dose of harsh reality by demonstrating how the Amazons use such a staff to cripple and kill a Centaur. Moral: even though we don’t see blood, a club is just as violent as a sword.
While the comic episodes continue to portray fighting with cartoonish exaggeration, the dramatic episodes of Hercules and Xena, especially in later seasons, have taken more care to portray the brutality and horror of violence. The dragging of Gabrielle in The Bitter Suite; the death of lolaus; the severing of Xena’s arms in The Way, and the blood that stains her chakram after she throws it at Gabrielle in Motherhood, all stand out as brutal realism. In the real world, the only fight ever portrayed on Xena or Hercules in which no one would have needed a doctor is the pie fight in Punchlines.