Warrior … Princess – Director: Michael Levine/Writer: Brenda Lilly
This one opens with Xena arriving at a castle and being taken aback when everyone automatically defers to her. She gets another shock when an assassin jumps her, but she does her fire-breathing trick and he takes off. She meets King Lias (of Treus), who tells her the assassin was after his daughter and he wants Xena to figure out who’s trying to kill her. Xena’s not inclined to help a rich king until she meets Lias’s daughter Diana … who’s Xena’s exact double.
Xena’s still not enthused about helping, since Diana is surrounded by guards, but Lias points out that the guards haven’t been able to keep the
assassins away so far. Lias also explains that Diana is marrying Mineus of Liberium, which means Liberium will have to abide by Treus’s laws and outlaw slavery. That sways Xena to his cause and she wonders if one of the rich slave-traders of Liberium is trying to stop the wedding. Xena agrees to take Diana’s place, but suggests Diana will be safer outside the castle since no one will look for her there. Xena and Diana swap clothes and Xena learns that Diana has never met her fiancé Mineus, only his brother Philemon (and by the way she talks about 
Philemon, it’s obvious she’s quite fond of him). Xena sends Diana out to meet Gabi, giving her a note explaining things and Diana’s eager to get out of the castle and mingle with the “little people” of her father’s kingdom. Once Xena is disguised as Diana, she snoops around the castle and finds someone suspicious. She decks him, then realizes it must be Philemon. She tells him he was knocked out by assassins, who ran off. Xena asks Philemon to escort her around the castle and they get jumped by a half-dozen assassins in the courtyard.
Philemon fights the bandits and Xena helps … surreptitiously, since she has to stay in character. Afterwards, she tends to Philemon’s cuts, but can’t chase the assassins like she wants to without giving herself away. On the
road north of the castle, Gabi is accosted by a thug and figures she’s safe when Xena shows up. But “Xena” is really Diana and ends up running away, so Gabi has to pound the thug herself. Diana gives her Xena’s note and Gabi figures Xena is testing her, until Diana starts crying. That convinces Gabi she’s dealing with the princess and she promises to help her act more like Xena. Meanwhile, pretending to be Diana is driving Xena nuts since she can’t do anything too suspicious. She follows the assassins’ blood trail and we see Philemon watching her from hiding. Xena lets Lias know the assassins’ trail led into the castle, so someone inside must be behind the assassination attempts … someone with 
a lot of power. Lias tells Xena about a reception where she’s to meet Mineus and Xena figures that’ll be a great place to root out the traitor. At the reception, Xena becomes suspicious of Lias’s ambassador to Liberium (Glauce), since he’s festooned with gems given to him by the slave-traders, but Lias says Glauce (and everyone else in his household) is above suspicion. Xena bluffs her way through several encounters (including with Mineus, who thinks her curtsy is abominable) and tries to smoke out the traitor by making some provocative toasts at dinner, passing it off as a joke when she goes too far. She’s asked to play the harp (apparently Diana is a very good musician) and has no choice but to oblige.
The obvious assumption is that harp-playing will turn out to be one of Xena’s many skills, but apparently not: she just breaks all the strings on the harp, pretending they were strung too tightly. Out on the road, Gabi teaches
Diana how to rough it (which Diana doesn’t much care for) and they meet some starving peasants. Gabi offers them food and Diana is quite affected by them, realizing her father’s kingdom isn’t the paradise she thought it was, at least not for everyone. Philemon confronts Xena about her ruse after putting the clues together (like Diana faints at the sight of blood) and Xena explains the switch to him. She also realizes Philemon is in love with Diana and urges him to tell her, but he says his brother has first claim on Diana. Xena points out that Diana doesn’t belong to anyone but herself. Another assassin tries to kill “Diana” and Xena catches him and interrogates him, learning the guard captain (Bromeus) was behind the 
assassination attempts. When they go to Bromeus’s room they find him hanged, an apparent suicide. Lias reveals Xena’s ruse and says he’s going out to find Diana and Glauce thanks Xena for uncovering the traitor. But Xena saw Glauce and Bromeus talking at the reception, so she’s a bit suspicious of Glauce … and of how neatly things have been wrapped up. Meanwhile, Diana has bought food for the peasants and when her father shows up, she lets him know the corruption in his kingdom must go deeper than he thought, since the poor aren’t getting the aid they’re supposed to. They head back to the castle, where Xena and Diana prepare to switch back their identities. Xena tells Gabi she’ll be glad to leave and we see Glauce listening … and planning to kill Diana once Xena’s gone.
As Philemon and Mineus discuss the wedding (which Mineus seems pretty ambivalent about), Philemon realizes Bromeus was murdered since there was nothing in his room tall enough for him to stand on and hang himself.
Philemon tells Diana and she orders him to go after Xena and bring her back. The wedding preparations begin and Philemon catches up to Xena on the road, urging her to come back since the real traitor is still loose. (They ride off, leaving Gabi to follow on foot.) At the ceremony, Glauce tries to drop a chandelier on the bride and groom (and brings in more assassins), but “Diana” starts kicking ass and he realizes she’s still Xena … they never actually switched back. Xena 
pounds the assassins (after tearing Diana’s dress up … personally I like it better this way) and stops Glauce from escaping by using the harp (which was apparently restrung overnight) as a bow. On the road, “Xena” gets Philemon to admit he loves Diana, then she reveals herself as the princess and tells him she loves him too. The wedding goes ahead with Philemon as the groom and there’s a big party afterward. Xena tells Gabi she didn’t really like being a pampered princess, but she did apparently enjoy the food …
This is a pretty good episode (it’s #87 on my all-time list) and Lucy does a great job distinguishing between Xena and Diana, not just with her voice but with all her mannerisms and body language too. This won’t be the last
episode with doubles of Xena; we’ll see characters named Meg and Leah in future episodes who look just like Xena, but also have their own distinct personalities. For me the later episodes are better, mainly because of Meg, who I really like. This episode is good, but Diana isn’t that compelling a character to me (she is funny at times, but not nearly as funny as Meg), plus Gabi was kinda sidelined through most of this one, so I can’t get into it as much as the later “Xena double” episodes.
It’s interesting to see Xena taken out of her comfort zone here. We know she’s adaptable and a pretty good bullshit artist, but Diana’s world is so much different than hers that she has trouble fitting in. Her servant (Tessa) 
is suspicious at first and Lias has to help cover for Xena’s faux pas. And of course, Diana has no idea how to be Xena, even adding ribbons to Xena’s armour to brighten it up (while Xena almost puts Diana’s dress on backwards). Xena also figures out that Diana and Philemon are in love and urges them to tell each other. It’s strange to see Xena giving advice to the lovelorn, considering how cynical she usually is about it. Maybe traveling with Gabi is softening her up. She even tells Gabi not to be afraid to speak up when she finds someone she loves, which is funny considering next season when Xena and Gabi do start developing romantic feelings for each other, neither of them speaks up … but I’ll get deeper into that when we get there.
Noticeable Things:
- Mineus seems completely indifferent to the whole idea of getting married; he seems to look on it as a political duty (which I guess it sort of is) and isn’t too worried about whether or not he’ll grow to love Diana … unlike Philemon, who already loves her. Mineus is also turned off when he sees Xena (thinking she’s Diana) kick ass at the
wedding. Personally, that’d be a plus for me, not a minus. - Lias first heard about Xena’s resemblance to Diana from his cousin, King Sisyphus.
- When Diana leaves the castle as Xena, she rides sidesaddle, which is not at all Xena-like.
- When the assassin Xena catches says she’s not Diana, Xena says “You got that right, Plato.” which I’m assuming is the Ancient Greek version of “No shit, Sherlock.”
- When she first meets Diana, Gabi thinks Xena is testing her; she even calls it “Test Day”; I have a theory that Xena is slowly teaching Gabi
everything she knows, all through the course of the series, and I’ll point out more instances as they arise. We don’t see most of it because it happens between episodes, but there are small hints of it throughout the series, like Gabi’s mention of Test Day here. Knowing Xena, she probably schedules regular Test Days, but throws in a few spontaneous ones just to keep Gabi on her toes. It makes sense Xena would be a pretty demanding teacher, since failure could mean death for Gabi in a real crisis.
Favourite Quotes:
- “I’m famished; a few bites of Akbash is just what I need.” Xena, thinking Akbash is a food, but it turns out to be Diana’s dog.
- “Well for starters, stop crying.” Gabi advising Diana how to be more like Xena.
- “Why are you throwing those rags on the soil?” Diana, getting used to the idea of roughing it.
- “It’s my Round Killing Thing.” Diana, telling the peasant kid about the chakram. When Gabi interjects with the word “Chakram”, Diana says “Bless you!”, thinking she sneezed.