Xena: Warrior, Heroine, Tramp
This chapter examines the oldest of the ancient heroes in this section of the book, the mythical warrior woman Xena in the eponymous Xena: Warrior Princess. The show first aired at the end of the twentieth century (1995) and continued through the early twenty- first century (2001). The depiction of Xena is significant not only because of her gender, but also because of the onscreen precedents she set for future characters. The chapter shows that Xena set the trend for women on screen who could be sexually active and polyamorous and not be coded as immoral or deviant. By following a model that more typically applied to male characters of the ancient world, Xena represented a more complicated image of heroism for female characters. Such a representation laid the foundations for a number of later characters, such as Saxa in STARZ Spartacus (2010–13) and Starbuck in Battlestar Gallactica (2005–9).