I remember reading in Xena older article 3 years ago on Wikipedia that the TV character Xena was inspired by some roman or Spanish princess but this info was deleted. Who did I read about?
I don’t know, but for years I thought Xena was “real” in the same sense that Hercules was (ie that there was an actual Greek myth it was based on).
I was a pretty big Xena fan, and to the best of my recollection the character wasn’t based on anyone in particular. She was introduced on Hercules as a villain and redeemed over a three-episode arc. The original plan was that she’d die nobly, but the popularity of Hercules had led to interest in a spin-off by that time so the writers kept her alive and gave her her own show.
There have been plenty of other warrior women in fiction and some in real life, but Xena was not closely modeled on any of them and I don’t know of any Roman or Spanish “warrior princesses”. You may be thinking of the Spartan queen Arachidamia or Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe of ancient Britain, who fought against the Romans.
If, by redeemed, you mean a becoming a completely different character, going from believing in anything to win to being honorable, and by three-episode arc you mean worst written episode in the series followed by a retconning two parter.
I recently decided to watch Xena, and decided to start with her Hercules debut, which I’d never seen. That first episode sucks worse than the first book of Discworld.
That said, you seriously should go check it out on Netflix.
That’s all I know, that Xena was a spinoff from Hercules. I never saw the Hercules episodes with her in them. But I loved me some Xena. That show was awesome and IMO did well with both dramatic episodes, silly episodes, and even musical episodes. Loved it all but hated, hated, hated the final episode!
Don’t even get me started on the first book of Discworld. Turned me off the whole series.
Xena was basically Red Sonja to Hercules’s Conan. It had nothing to do with any pre-20th Century mythology.