Gabrielle (Xena)

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For the singer Gabrielle, please see Gabrielle (singer)

Gabrielle is also a speculative name for the recently-discovered Template:Mpl's moon, S/2005 (2003 UB313) 1.

Image:Gabrielle.pngGabrielle was a fictional character in Xena: Warrior Princess, played by Renee O'Connor. Also referred to as the Battling Bard of Potidaea.

When Gabrielle first met the Warrior Princess, Xena, she was a farm girl living in the village of Potidaea. She and her sister Lila, along with several other village girls, were kidnapped by the men of the warlord, Draco, to be sold as slaves. Xena intervened and rescued them. Awed by her figthing skills, Gabrielle decided that she wanted to become a warrior too. She also wanted to avoid the marriage her parents Herodotus and Hecuba had arranged for her with her childhood friend Perdicas. Gabrielle insisted on following an initially reluctant Xena on the road. The two women soon developed a strong bond of love and friendship. Over the six years of the series, Gabrielle evolved from a naive, idealistic teenager into a fully fledged but deeply conflicted warrior fighting alongside Xena.

Gabrielle became an Amazon when she defended a dying Amazon princess during an ambush. Before she died, the Princess Terreis passed her "right of caste" to Gabrielle, and Gabrielle inherited her rank and possessions. This left Gabrielle the heiress presumptive to the Amazon Queen Melosa. Melosa's adopted daughter Velasca became a rival for the position of Queen of the Amazons after Melosa's death, but Velasca's schemes (which included aspirations to godhood) were foiled by Xena and Gabrielle. As Gabrielle wished to travel with Xena rather than rule the Amazons, she appointed her friend Ephiny to act as Amazon Queen in her place.

Gabrielle learned how to fight with a quarterstaff from the Amazons. With Xena's encouragement, she developed a philosophy of fighting for the Greater Good without killing.

About a year after meeting Xena, Gabrielle encountered Perdicas again and decided to marry him. The morning after their wedding, he was murdered by Xena's nemesis, Callisto. Gabrielle's grief and anger tested her ideals of reverence for life, but she nonetheless resisted the impulse to kill Callisto. During this period, Gabrielle's strong commitment to peacemaking and compassion often served as a counterbalance to Xena's warrior nature.

When helping to defend Britannia against Julius Caesar, Gabrielle came in contact with an evil cult that tricked her into killing one of its priestesses, Meridian. Her loss of her "blood innocence" enabled the evil god Dahak to impregnate her. After a pregnancy that lasted only a few days, Gabrielle gave birth to a girl child she named Hope. After becoming convinced that the baby was simply a vessel for Dahak, Xena wanted to kill Hope. Gabrielle managed to save her daughter by putting her in a basket and sending her downriver.

Several months later, Gabrielle found Hope again, now looking like a nine year old, and already in the process of helping her father, Dahak, implement his plan to take over the world. Hope allied herself with Xena's enemy, Callisto. In revenge for Xena's attempt to kill her as a baby, Hope murdered Xena's only son, Solan. This forced Gabrielle to accept that Hope was indeed evil. She killed her daughter by giving her poison, an act that continued to haunt Gabrielle throughout the series. She held herself responsible for Solan's death, as well as for betraying Xena a second time, even after reconciliation with Xena was effected through the musical journey in The Bitter Suite. Therefore, when she once again encountered Hope, who had been saved from the funeral pyre by her father Dahak, Gabrielle sacrificed herself to save Xena by jumping into a lava pit and taking Hope with her. Gabrielle mysteriously survived the fall, and was later reunited with Xena. It was revealed later that Ares saved Gabrielle, with plans to use her as a bargaining chip against Xena. Image:Chakram 05.jpg After her first kill, and the traumatic events with Hope that followed it, Gabrielle temporarily embraced complete pacifism as an alternative to fighting by Xena's side. She and Xena travelled to India, where they encountered a series of false prophets and gurus, as well as a genuine healer and teacher, Eli. Eli claimed to have found enlightenment and Gabrielle became interested in his philosophy of nonviolence and inner peace, which he called the Way of Love. Gabrielle attempted to follow Eli's way, and threw away her staff under his influence. However, when both she and Xena were captured by Romans, she ultimately chose to fight to try to save Xena. Before their crucifixion on the Ides of March, Gabrielle told Xena that she had chosen "The Way of Friendship."

After being crucified, Gabrielle and Xena were restored to life by Eli. At this time, Gabrielle accepted her new path as a warrior and acquired a pair of sais, which became her signature weapon thereafter. Xena's pregnancy, revealed shortly after the duo's return to life, further forced Gabrielle to fight and sometimes protect Xena. On two occasions, the god of war Ares, impressed by Gabrielle's new warrior skills, tried to recruit her to his side but Gabrielle always resisted.

Gabrielle and Xena slept in an ice cave for 25 years after Ares placed them there because he mistakenly believed they were dead. After waking up, she discovered that her parents had been killed by the North African warlord Gurkhan, who had also kidnapped her niece, Sara, for his harem. Gabrielle struggled with the issue of seeking vengeance against Gurkhan. She was often troubled by her role as a warrior, particularly when she had to lead her Amazon tribe into a high-casualty battle against a superior army led by the demigod Bellerophon to rescue a fellow Amazon queen. Despite the success of the mission, Gabrielle told Xena, "With every battle, I lose more of myself."

Nonetheless, with Xena's death in Japan, Gabrielle apparently stepped into her friend's role as the Warrior Princess. Symbolically, she inherited Xena trademark weapon, the chakram. The series' final scene finds her on a ship headed to Egypt, where she apparently intends to continue the fight for the Greater Good.

Image:Gabrielle in the Bitter Suite.jpg

Gabrielle as a Bard

Despite Gabrielle's ascendancy as a warrior, her role as a bard remained important as well. About a year into her travels with Xena, her scrolls about Xena's exploits began to gain popularity, apparently helping (according to Ares) turn Xena into a legend. After their 25-year sleep, Gabrielle found out that her stories had been read as far away as North Africa where they were popular among nomad tribes. It is a part of the series' basic concept that the episodes are based on Gabrielle's scrolls, discovered in the "future" episode "The Xena Scrolls" (Season 2).