Ivanova is the second in command on Babylon 5 and she's very... Russian. Guilt riddled, mildly alcoholic, with a dead brother and a tortured/suicidal mother and her almost lover (yay! canonical lesbian couples) gets killed early on in the series and I can't remember what happens to Marcus, and she totally represses all of it... so it seems like she would have lots of woobie potential.

And Xena... I think you either need to be gleeful about finding all of the things they get wrong with Greek/Norse/Indian/Chinese mythology, or you have to divorce yourself entirely from anything you know about those things and just buy into their version entirely. But if you can do that, it is wonderfully campy and cracktastic and OMG full of angst.

And I think I might go write that meta now...