Xena first appeared on the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys television series (in the episode The Warrior Princess airing in March 1995), as a seductive but treacherous warlord. Two more episodes during May sweeps chronicled her evolution from a villain to a friend and ally of Hercules. Interest in her was so strong that shortly afterwards she became the main character of the spin-off series Xena: Warrior Princess, which not only outlived the original series but eclipsed it in the public imagination (Xena was one of the first female leads in an action series for many years, hugely influencing subsequent fantasy series from Buffy to Alias). In this series the character sets out to redeem her murderous past by fighting against tyranny and saving the lives of innocents. Many of her adventures prior to the televised stories were subsequently revealed in flashback episodes (although much remained obscure). Xena was played by Lucy Lawless.

The only daughter of the tavernkeeper, Cyrene, Xena grew up in Amphipolis with her two brothers. During her mid to late teens, the warlord Cortese attacked the village, which prompted some villagers, including Xena's older brother, Toris, to run for the hills. However, Xena and her younger brother Lyceus convinced the remainder of their fellow villagers to stay and fight. Although Amphipolis was saved, Lyceus and many other villagers were killed in the battle, which formed a rift between Cyrene and her daughter and caused Xena to be ostracized by the town.

The death of her beloved younger brother Lyceus lead Xena to leave Amphipolis and begin to build her own army, with her ultimate goal being to take revenge on Cortese. She crossed the seas early on as a pirate of sorts, meeting Julius Caesar and a young Gaelic slave-stowaway, M'Lila, who would both profoundly affect the destiny of the Warrior Princess. While onboard Xena's ship, M'Lila taught her several fighting techniques as well as instructing her in the use of pressure points, including what became her signature "pinch" maneuver.

Xena took Caesar as a hostage, and was naively swayed by the young officer to join forces, after beginning an affair with him. She ransomed him back to Rome as they had planned only to have him come back with his own men and capture her ship. He had her and her men crucified on a nearby beach, watching as his orders to break her legs were carried out.

M'Lila rescued her from the cross and took Xena to a healer in the mountains by the name of Niklio. They were followed by Roman soldiers, who killed the Gaelic woman as she jumped in front of an arrow meant for Xena. After M'Lila died in her arms, Xena fully embraced her dark side and fought the soldiers, killing them all (despite her broken legs).

After surviving Caesar's betrayal, a crippled and rage-filled Xena went East where she teamed up with the warlord Borias who left his wife and son to become her lover. The two terrorized Chin with their joint forces until Xena angered Borias by alienating the powerful Chinese families Ming and Lao. Without his knowledge, Xena kidnapped Ming Tzu's son, Ming T'ien, for ransom. With Borias' help, Ming Tzu captured Xena intending to kill her for sport.

Xena was saved from certain death by Ming T'ien's mother, Lao Ma, a woman of great spiritual power. During their time together, Lao Ma healed Xena's legs and gave her the title of "warrior princess". Under Lao Ma's tutelage, Xena briefly left some of her darkness behind until Borias re-entered her life. A rift formed between Xena and Lao Ma when she murdered Ming Tzu, and suggested that they also kill Ming T'ien.

She also met a shaman, Alti, who lured her toward greater evil with promises that she would become the Destroyer of Nations. Egged on by Alti's promises, Xena, by then pregnant with Borias' child, set out to conquer Corinth. Borias was increasingly troubled by the excesses of her violence, but could do little to stop her: by then they had split their armies, and Xena's was the bigger of the two. At Corinth, they became mortal enemies after he stopped her from slaughtering the Centaurs with whom he had tried to negotiate an agreement. With Xena about to give birth, Borias tried to get her out of her camp in the hope of rescuing their relationship. He was killed by one of her lieutenants, Dagnine; but the realization that Borias came back for her because he loved her and their unborn child had a strong effect on Xena. It was enough to make her decide to give up her newborn baby to the centaurs, so that he would be raised in safety and away from her dangerous influence.

After that, Xena went North, where she spent some time as one of Odin's Valkyrie and unsuccessfully tried to obtain supreme power by stealing the Rheingold.

During the largely undocumented period immediately prior to her first appearance in the Hercules series, Xena first obtained her signature weapon, the Chakram of Darkness.

About ten years after first turning to evil, Xena met Hercules. Initially she set out to kill him. Then, her army turned against her after she stopped her lieutenant Darphus from killing a child in a sacked village. She ran a gauntlet but survived. She then fought Hercules, in the hope that she would get her army back if she could bring back his head. Hercules defeated her but spared her life, and she eventually joined him to defeat her old army.

Xena then set out to redeem herself by starting to protect those who couldn't defend themselves. On her new path she met a village girl named Gabrielle (later known as the Battling Bard of Potadeia), who became her traveling companion and best friend. At some point in her journeys Xena ran into Ares, the God of War, who had known her from when she was a warlord and was always obsessed with winning her affections, but was more usually her adversary. Later on in the series it appeared that Xena was bisexual, possibly having a relationship with Gabrielle.

Xena's subsequent life was marred by many tragedies. Her son Solan, who never got to know her as his mother, died at the hands of Gabrielle's demon child Hope with the help of Callisto, a woman warrior who was obsessed with revenge against Xena because Xena had destroyed her village and her family when she was still evil. She nearly lost Gabrielle more than once, and she and Gabrielle were crucified by the Romans on the Ides of March -- the day of Caesar's death -- but later revived by a mystic named Eli. Eve, the miracle child Xena conceived after her resurrection from an angel's touch, was prophesied to bring about the Twilight of the Olympian gods. To escape the gods' persecution, Xena and Gabrielle tried to fake their deaths. Their plan went awry when Ares buried them in an ice cave where they slept for 25 years. During that time, Eve -- adopted by the Roman nobleman Octavius -- grew up to become Livia, the Champion of Rome, and a ruthless persecutor of Eli's followers. After her return, Xena was able to turn Livia to repentance, and she became the Messenger of Eli. After Eve's cleansing by baptism, Xena was granted the power to kill gods as long as her daughter lived. In a final confrontation, the Twilight came to pass when Xena killed most of the gods to save her daughter, and was herself saved by Ares when he gave up his immortality to heal the badly injured and dying Eve and Gabrielle. Xena later helped him regain his godhood.

Xena's quest for redemption ended when she sacrificed her life to right a wrong she had committed many years ago in Japan. Her spirit, however, still very much appears to be with Gabrielle.

Xena performed many feats that were considered outside the normal human range and bordered on that of a demigoddess. She may have been the mightiest purely mortal being ever to live. While Xena did not possess the brute strength of her friend and ally Hercules, she could arm-wrestle warlords, kick down doors, and knock out opponents with a single punch. Xena's incredible fighting prowess made her a match for foes who were otherwise physically superior to her.

She had the ability to absorb a great deal of pain dispassionately, such as when arrows were removed. She ignored the agony of a dislocated shoulder until reminded by Gabrielle, at which point she repaired the injury by deliberately colliding with a wall. When she was in a greatly-weakened state such as during the ordeal of crucifixion this ability was not apparent.

Xena honed her body to peak human condition. Combined with her iron will, she became the only warrior to survive the ordeal of the Gauntlet, where she was forced to run without armor or weapons between two lines of soldiers, who beat her with clubs. In the final episode of the series, Xena was hit with a multitude of arrows in different areas of her body and still continued to fight a samurai army singlehandedly.

While technically Xena did not possess godly powers, she had a leaping ability demonstrated by other warriors of a high skill level, notably M'Lila, Callisto and Draco. Xena performed gravity-defying leaps usually in an acrobatic style up to 30 feet. Xena lept straight up from moat water to the top of a high castle wall and somersaulted from her position on the ground to the top of a tall tree where an archer was ambushing her group with arrows. Xena commonly ran up a ruffian's torso, performed a backflip, and kicked him while still in mid-air. On rare occasions she actually ran on the faces of a surrounding squad of soldiers.

Xena possessed incredible speed and reflexes. She was able to catch knives and arrows in midflight and dodge energy blasts from mystical foes. She was able to routinely catch her chakram, a skill only Callisto, Eve and Gabrielle (fully-trained by the end of the series) were able to duplicate. Xena used multiple styles of martial arts and could convert virtually any object into a weapon, from swords, to chobos, to scarfs, pans, and fish. In terms of weaponry Xena usually carries her sword, chakram, a breast dagger kept in her bosom armor, and a whip. She also made use of the incredible spiritual powers her mentor, Lao Ma possessed. At first, she was unable to recapture the power when she first manifested it, but was able to retain its use for a longer period while undergoing an intense spritual regimine with Kao H'Sin, one of Lao Ma's twin daughters.