Who Would I Be Without You?
K. Stoddard Hayes explores the intense and ambiguous relationship between Xena and Gabrielle.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 08
“You are the best thing that ever happened to me. You gave my life meaning and joy. You will be a part of me forever.”
Xena to Gabrielle, Sacrifice, Part II
No two women could appear more different from each other than Xena and Gabrielle when they first meet. Gabrielle has lived all her life in a quiet village, the child of a sheltering nuclear family, betrothed to a nice young man, and has never seen a moment’s excitement until the day Draco’s soldiers come.
Xena grew up without a father, turned to war before she was 20, and has spent her entire adult life on a path of violence and hatred.
How do a Warrior Princess and a village farm girl become best friends, life partners and soul mates?
When they first encounter each other in Sins of the Past, they are already far more alike than they seem. Neither fits the common mould: Gabrielle is a maverick in her village, while Xena has always gone her own way regardless of what others think. Both are willing to fight to defend the innocent. While the other villages cower from Draco’s soldiers, Gabrielle fights to save her sister. Xena, who has just buried her weapons and vowed to give up war, digs them up again the instant she sees that fighting can help someone. Each wants the life that the other one has. While Xena is riding away from war towards home and village, Gabrielle is desperate to escape the stifling quiet of village life to have adventures. And each needs a fresh start and a friend who can help her discover who she really is…
As the two learn to care about each other, each starts trying to protect the other. Predictably, the source of both of their fears is Xena’s warrior side. Xena usually tries to shelter Gabrielle from the dangers of her warrior life, especially at first. Gabrielle is glad to be rescued when she truly needs rescuing, yet she is also eager to prove to Xena that she can stand up for herself and be a valuable partner. When Xena tells Gabrielle to stay in a village while she and her brother deal with a troublesome warlord in Death Mask, Gabrielle answers, “Have you ever considered that there isn’t a safe time to be around you? Now, that village doesn’t need my help, but you might, and I’m going with you… End of discussion.”
Protecting Gabrielle becomes an emotional land mine after Alti shows Xena the vision of herself and Gabrielle being crucified. Xena is convinced that she can save Gabrielle from that doom only by separating from her. Hence she takes the drastic step of leaving Gabrielle with Najara in Past Imperfect in the hope that the way of light that Najara preaches will be enough to keep her best friend from following her. When Najara’s true nature is unmasked, Xena has to explain her desertion by telling Gabrielle about the vision. During the next few days, Xena tries several times to protect Gabrielle as they fight in a besieged city; and Gabrielle challenges her every time. Finally, when Xena tries to get her out of the city under cover of a diversion, Gabrielle snaps.
“So okay, in order to save me, you’re willing to risk these men? Xena, I don’t believe in your vision. I can’t afford to. Now either I prove you wrong and we go on from here, or I prove you right and we die. But either way, I will not continue like this.”
After this, Xena accepts that she and Gabrielle will go through it together, whatever the outcome.
For Gabrielle, caring for Xena is a matter of protecting Xena from what she used to be. Although she is happy to see Xena defend the innocent, she is also afraid that Xena might forget where the line is between just war and slaughter. In The Price, Xena believes that only wholesale war will save an Athenian garrison from the Horde, a nation she believes is less than human in its savagery. It’s Gabrielle who demonstrates, by a simple act of mercy, that the Horde are human too, and shows Xena another way to communicate with the enemy.
On two different occasions, Xena and Gabrielle each have to confront the other’s apparent death. When Xena appears to have succumbed to poison in Greater Good, Gabrielle hardly has time to mourn before she must literally take Xena’s place, masquerading as Xena to try and frighten off a menacing warlord. When Xena actually dies at the end of Destiny, Gabrielle’s first reaction is denial.
“I know you always told me to be strong. I can’t be. Not now. You can’t leave me…” she whispers over Xena’s body. “I just feel this emptiness I never knew before, and it scares me… This world needs you. I need you.”
Despite these fears, Gabrielle does find the strength to go on. She sets out to bring Xena’s body home to rest beside her brother, then accepts the arguments of the Amazons that she should remain with them and begin a new life as their queen.
Xena’s response to Gabrielle’s death is far more drastic. When Gabrielle goes into cardiac arrest in Is There A Doctor in the House?, those around Xena gently urge her to let Gabrielle to cross over. Although Xena persuaded Gabrielle, only a little while ago, to accept the death of a wounded man she was treating, she cannot accept Gabrielle’s death.
“Wake up!” she begs, slapping Gabrielle’s face and giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation. “Breathe! Come on, wake up!” And finally, in a scream of rage and desperation: “Don’t you leave me!”
These are almost the same words Gabrielle speaks to the dead Xena in Destiny, but there is a difference. Seeing the wild look in Xena’s eyes, it’s impossible to imagine her saying, as Gabrielle says to Iolaus, “It’ll be all right.”
At this moment, Xena doesn’t believe that she will ever be all right without Gabrielle. She is terrified that without Gabrielle to be her light, she will fall back into the darkness and violence of her old life.
Two years later, when Gabrielle appears to have died after she jumped into an abyss with Hope in Sacrifice, Part II, Xena begins a dangerous spirit journey to the Amazon Land of the Dead in a desperate attempt to see Gabrielle one more time. Once again it seems she will not be able to let go. But Xena has changed more than she realises. In the Land of the Dead she learns that through her old alliance with Alti, Cyan and her Amazons have been cursed to wander outside the gate of Eternity.
“You know nothing would make me happier than seeing you again. You’re my light,” she says to the absent Gabrielle. “I just realised what it was that you gave me. A light of my own. There’s something I gotta do. Something you’d want me to do.” (Adventures in the Sin Trade, Part I) Within sight of the gate that will take her to see Gabrielle again, she turns back to break the Amazons’ curse.
With all their fears for each other’s well being, it’s ironic that the worst thing that has befallen Xena and Gabrielle’s friendship comes from a temple where Gabrielle should have been safe from battle, and from an evil far greater than the darkest places in Xena’s heart. Dahak’s attack on Gabrielle’s innocence leaves her filled with despair. Xena tries to comfort her, but she cannot follow her into that darkness, since her own first kill left her only with guilt. Gabrielle’s first kill nearly destroys her sense of self. “I was going to revere life, bring peace, heal. That’s the one thing I never doubted, my role as peacemaker.”
The birth of Hope seems to Gabrielle like salvation and unmixed joy, until Xena makes it clear that she will not abandon her suspicions of Dahak’s child. Then the rift between them opens. For the first time since Gabrielle left home, Xena is not the person she cares most about. “You get this clear, Xena. No matter what she is, she is my daughter. Don’t come between us.” (Gabrielle’s Hope)
It is an astonishing reversal to see Gabrielle fleeing from Xena as if she were the worst enemy in the world. Their years of friendship have given Gabrielle the intimate knowledge of Xena that will allow her to elude Xena’s pursuit and finally work a deception that she knows Xena will accept, because Xena wants to believe she has seen the truth about her child and killed her.
This secret is still fresh when Xena decides to go to Chin. Perhaps her own guilt over deceiving Xena is part of the reason Gabrielle cannot accept Xena’s departure. Though she recognizes much later that she betrayed Xena because she hated her for loving someone else so much, her own lie must be fuel for that jealousy. Some part of her must fear that if Xena finds out her secret, she might stop loving her and turn to this other friend.
The other reason for this betrayal, or perhaps the rationalisation for it, comes from Gabrielle’s fears about Xena’s dark side. When Ming T’ien asks, “Why did you betray her, if you love her?”, Gabrielle explains, “I thought she was betraying herself by resorting to murder. “ She does indeed believe this, for when Ming T’ien insists that murder is in Xena’s blood, Gabrielle can’t stop herself from agreeing.
Xena can be relentless in hating those who have betrayed her, such as Caesar and Callisto. Yet she cannot hate Gabrielle, even now. When she leans towards her friend and says, “Scratch my nose, will you?” and in a burst of mingled tears and laughter, Gabby scratches, the gesture restores their bond in an instant. (The Debt, Part II)
Yet Xena hides the fact that she has killed Ming T’ien from Gabrielle. Gabrielle is proud of Xena because she believes she found a way to ruin Ming T’ien without killing him. It seems at this moment that Xena does not trust Gabrielle enough to disappoint her, and so another lie comes between him.
The death of Solan at the hands of Hope is the final, fatal stroke to the relationship. In Maternal Instincts, as they stand beside the pyres mourning their lost children, Gabrielle is desperate for Xena’s forgiveness, and for the comfort of her friendship. As far as Xena is concerned, Gabrielle has killed Solan as surely as if she strangled him himself.
“I trusted you and you lied to me,” she says, and forbids her to ever speak Solan’s name. When Gabrielle whispers “I love you, Xena,” she turns away without answering.
For Xena, this betrayal comes from the one she has loved most, and all her love turns to rage and hatred. She has never been more brutal than when she drags Gabrielle out to the cliff, and the sight of Gabrielle’s bloodied face - a sight which would once have horrified her - fills her with savage glee.
Their extraordinary journey through Illusia lets them act out their pain and anger, their blaming of each other, their love turned to hatred. Even here, in a place they have reached because they were trying to kill each other, they find themselves working together to find their way out. Illusia takes each of them back to the place where their hatred started; to Caesar’s cross, and to the altar of Dahak. From there they have to give up their hatred, not only of each other, but of all their enemies. To be free and to return to life, they have to forgive even themselves for all the mistakes they have made and the wrongs they have done.
After the death of Hope, Gabrielle and Xena begin a new phase in their relationship, confronting a moral conflict which has been implicit since the first day they met. Gabrielle feels more and more drawn to pacifism, which has been a lifelong ideal. After an encounter with Najara, the false prophet of the light, Gabrielle’s meeting with Eli, who is the real thing, makes her decide to commit her life to “the way of love”. This choice convinces Xena that they must separate for Gabrielle’s sake. She has always felt guilty about involving Gabrielle in the violence of her own life. Now, as Gabrielle throws away even her staff, Xena says, “I’m sorry I took you so far from your truth,” and adds that she thinks Gabrielle should stay with Eli.
Gabrielle is much more confident in the good Xena has done for her. “Do you think I could have understood the power of selfless love if it weren’t for our friendship? You and I stay together… All rivers run to the sea. We’ll end up in the same place, I’m sure of it.” (The Way)
They leave it at this until the very moment when Alti’s vision seems likely to be fulfilled. Even then, when Xena breaks into the prison to free her friends, the very first thing she says to Gabrielle is, “The vision isn’t going to happen.”
Gabrielle is ready to flee and leave the rearguard defence to Xena, until Xena falls with a broken back, unable to escape. In an instant, Gabrielle turns from a pacifist to a berserker, slaughtering half a dozen soldiers before the madness leaves her and she surrenders. The sight of Gabrielle killing horrifies Xena, who is torn with fresh guilt, but Gabrielle tells her she has nothing to be sorry for.
“I chose the path of friendship,” she says. In that moment of madness she has learned that she cares more about Xena than she does about a way she has longed for all her life. And she tells Xena again what their friendship has meant to her.
“You brought out the best in me. Before I met you, no one saw me for who I was. I felt invisible. But you saw all the things that I could be. You saved me, Xena.” (Ides of March)
Even after death, Gabrielle and Xena have an unbreakable bond. Separated on the way to Paradise, the first question each of them asks when she arrives is “Where’s Xena? Where’s Gabrielle?” Xena refuses to accept Heaven and rebirth as long as Gabrielle is caught in Hell. And Gabrielle, once rescued, insists on joining the battle against Xena’s demon army. She knows that her bond with Xena is the angels’ only hope for victory. Even the demon Xena cares more about Gabrielle than about conquering Heaven.
“The love we have is stronger than Heaven or Hell. It transcends good and evil. It’s an end in itself. Our souls are destined to be together. Gabrielle, you can’t let me walk through Hell alone!” (Fallen Angel)
With their resurrection and recovery, the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle has returned to harmony after two years of conflict and turmoil and death. They work smoothly as a team, with only minor bumps in the road, and both are now devoted to keeping Eve safe from the vengeful gods, and from the violence of the world they live in. Even if new conflicts arise to divide them, the one thing that’s certain is that Xena and Gabrielle will build bridges to close the chasm. They have already proven that not even Heaven and Hell can keep them apart.
SIDEBAR: I hate it when you do that!
No matter how much two people love each other, they will always have habits and quirks that drive each other crazy.
Gabrielle annoys Xena by…
Obsessing about petty things.
Taking forever to weigh all the options for a decision.
Chattering on and on about one of her ideas.
Being bubbly and optimistic.
Using Xena’s Chakram as a fishknife or a back scratcher.
Xena annoys Gabrielle by…
Always being right.
Making all the decisions without consulting Gabrielle.
Not telling her about important things (like having a son or another brother).
Being cynical and pessimistic.
Protecting her from bandits, warlords and dark secrets, when she doesn’t need protecting.
SIDEBAR: Dangerous Liaisons
Through the years of their friendship, Xena and Gabrielle have also developed close relationships with three very special people:
Ares
The God of War has spent the last five years trying to win back his Warrior Princess. Naturally, Gabrielle gets caught up in his machinations nearly as much as Xena. Recently he has even tried to win Gabrielle to his service. If he can’t have Xena, what better successor than the woman she trained? Yet his attempt to buy Xena’s affections by saving Eve reveals that, for him, Xena will always be the one and only.
Callisto
Obsessed with taking revenge on Xena for the death of her family, Callisto has always known that the best way to hurt Xena is to attack Gabrielle. Her alliances with Ares, with Hope, and with Caesar have had devastating consequences for them and for herself. All the debts have now been paid. As Xena saved Callisto from Hell, Callisto helped restore Xena and Gabrielle to life, and gave Xena her own soul to be reborn as her child.
Joxer
As would-be warrior and genuine bumbler, Joxer brings in a level of slapstick comedy that contrasts with Xena’s warrior prowess and makes Gabrielle’s sidekick insecurities seem wonderfully competent. As their closest friend, he is also a surrogate for our own feelings about them, especially in tragedy. When Gabrielle and Xena are crucified, it is Joxer’s grief that moves us the most. And while Xena has the obsessions of Ares and Callisto, Gabrielle has Joxer’s love.
SIDEBAR: Do they or don’t they?
The great unresolved question about Xena and Gabrielle is whether or not these two close and lifelong friends are also lovers.
Within the series itself, the evidence is deliberately inconclusive. Both Xena and Gabrielle have had male romantic partners, and the nearest we have ever seen them come to physical intimacy is a kiss given when Xena is sharing the body of Autolycus. Yet their daily contact is full of touches, glances and embraces that could be interpreted romantically. More important from a romantic viewpoint is the emotional intimacy they have developed over the years. It’s impossible to imagine either of them forsaking the other to fall in love with anyone else.
In the real world, Xena fans include both those who believe homosexuality is immoral, and those who advocate full political and civil rights for homosexuals. Both sides want to claim Xena as their own champion of strong female role models. While those in favour of the subtext may wish that the show would make a definitive statement, there are just as many on the other side who could not accept such a relationship. The subtext can never be addressed directly as long as homosexuality remains a divisive political and social issue in our culture.
In an interview in the first issue of this magazine, Executive Producer Rob Tapert gave his definitive response to questions about the relationship: “Xena and Gabrielle are the best of mates, and whether they have a sexual relationship is kind of their own business. But they certainly love one another. They would die for one another. Would they be open to sexual experimentation between the two of them? I assume that they would, but I’ve never seen it in a script or on film…
“I don’t want to be the one who says, ‘This is what’s right.’ But I also want to leave the door open for people to say that there’s certainly nothing wrong with this… Both Xena and Hercules have gone out of their way not to pass judgement on people for their race, creed, colour or sexual preference.”