I notice this tends to happen a lot to leading women in "geek fiction". They all have to be really "virginal" (so to speak, not that they're actually virgins).
I don't think its limited to "geek fiction".
The
Virgin Queen (Queen Elizabeth I)
wasn't, and yet the real/historical woman played
the part to prevent someone else from usurping her power. I suspect Mulgrew deep down had "that" fear, that entanglements in the bedchamber (I'm still channeling QE I) would water down her character's power.
As for the
writers who write these TV fictions, I also suspect that they suffer from the "CK Dexter Haven" syndrome. If you are unfamiliar with the name, I would point you toward a wonderful comedy from the 1940's called "The Philadelphia Story".
From CK's first long conversation with his ex-wife, on the eve of her wedding to another man.
"There's something engaging about it, this "Goddess" buisness, something more challenging to the male than the more obvious charms. We're very vain, you know.
"'This citadel can and shall be taken and I'm the boy to do it.'"
(CK, after admitting that he craves the Goddess, then berates her for these "qualities".)
"Because you will never be a 1st class human being or a 1st class woman... until you've learned to have regard for human fraility. Its a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime... but your own sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This Goddess must and shall remain intact."
The movie is rife with examples of the men (her fiance, her exhusband, a new potential lover late to the party) who do just as CK suggests. They crave the Goddess, they worship "from afar", they put her on a pedestal... and then they trash her because they have put her so high above them
Kate Mulgrew, the actress, didn't do as
I would have preferred, which was push for a relationship that would have uplifted her character. I
suspect she refused because she has seen enough plays/tv scripts, movies where the female in control
lost control when the sexual agenda was explored. Was she right/wrong/ paranoid? That would take another thread to delve into appropriately.
But the end result of Mulgrew's tenacity was that the
"CK Dexter Havens" of the writing world didn't completely win on Voyager. Yes, they put Janeway on a pedestal, and made her a Virginal Queen/Goddess, but they also let her foot
slip, and let her show that she
DID have regard for human fraility.
YMMV (and usually does.)