Xena Warrior Princess

Character Info

Gabrielle

How we first met Gabrielle

Gabrielle is the older of two sisters and was raised in the village of Poteidaia. She is reasonably well educated and fancies herself as a travelling bard, telling tales of great deeds to an audience. She is betrothed to a villager, Perdicus who she does not find any great attraction to at first. When Xena saves her and her sister from the men of the warlord Draco, she becomes enthralled with the excitment of Xena's life and leaves home to follow Xena and see the mighty deeds for herself. At first Xena considers her a danger and a nuisense but over time an extremely close friendship develops and Xena comes to rely on Gabrielle to help her see the good in things.

When Gabrielle tries to protect an amazon princess who is under attack by archers, the Amazon wills Gabrielle her status as an Amazon Princess. After Gabrielle and Xena become embroiled in a struggle to stop a warlord provoking war between the Centaurs and the Amazons, Gabrielle ends up as Queen of the Amazons. As part of this, Ephiny, an Amazon princess, trains her in the use of the fighting staff and Gabrielle becomes well practiced in the art of using it to deflect attackers. (Probably the funniest example of this is when Joxer tries to capture her in Callisto.) She favours it because it is a defensive weapon and allows her to defend herself without taking a life.

When their travels take them to the besieged city of Troy, Gabrielle is reunited with the man who was to be her husband, Perdicus. He's now a soldier in the trojan army and very different from the dull farmer he was when we first met him. Although their ways part after Troy falls to Menaleus, Gabrielle's feelings for Perdicus have changed considerably. Soon thereafter, Gabrielle has a crisis of confidence when she freezes during an attack by bandits and she returns home to Poteidaia, only to find the village in great trouble. After sorting things out, she returns to Xena reassured of her usefulness. After further adventures, she and Xena meet up with Perdicus yet again and Gabrielle decides somewhat precipitously to marry him, and together they head off home. En route they are intercepted by Callisto, who has just escaped from prison, who when foiled by Xena in her attempt to kill Gabrielle goes on to kill Perdicus. Gabrielle finds her resolve never to take a life severely strained and attempts to go up against Callisto by herself.

During a visit to Britannia with Xena, Gabrielle becomes pregant with the offspring of the one great evil, Dahak and looses her blood innocence when she's tricked into murdering a priestess. After her child Hope is born, Xena becomes obsessed with killing her, leading Gabrielle to hide her in a basket and pretends she killed Hope herself. Later Gabrielle meets up with Hope again, who is in league with her enemy Callisto, and who kills Xena's son Solan. This finally convinces Gabrielle that she must kill her daughter, which she does with poison. Although Hope dies and is cremated, she manages to come back and later hatches from a cocoon as a mature woman looking identical to her mother.

The Actress

Her previous work includes a non-Gabrielle role in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys as Deanara in "Hercules and The Lost Kingdom", a TV movie reviving the Rockford Files with James Garner, and Darkman II: The Return of Durant for Xena & Hercules producers Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi.

Xena	Characters