Etzel- Germanic FigureMortal"King of the Huns"

Etzel in the Nibelungenlied

After his first wife Helche died, Etzel sent the Margrave Rüdiger to woo the widowed Kriemhild. She accepted. Not for love, but because Etzel's court and Etzel's armies could give her what she needed: a second chance at the Burgundians who murdered Siegfried.

Etzel suspected nothing. He was wealthy, generous, and glad to welcome Kriemhild's kinsmen when they came to visit. He feasted them. Kriemhild waited. When the violence finally broke, it was her doing. She turned Etzel's own vassals against her brothers, and the feast-hall became a slaughterhouse. Etzel's infant son Ortlieb was killed before his eyes. By the end, everyone he had welcomed was dead, and he stood in the wreckage of a hospitality he had offered in good faith.

Atli in the Eddas

The Norse poems Atlakviða and Atlamál tell a harsher version. Here it is the king himself who brings ruin. Atli marries Gudrún after Sigurd's death, then invites her brothers Gunnar and Högni to his court. The invitation is a trap. He wants the Nibelung gold.

Gunnar and Högni come anyway. Atli seizes them. Högni has his heart cut from his chest while he is still alive. Gunnar is thrown into a pit of snakes, where he plays a harp with his toes until the serpents kill him. The gold is never found.

Gudrún's revenge is worse than the crime. She kills her two sons by Atli, serves their flesh to him at a feast, and tells him what he has eaten. Then she murders him in his bed and burns the hall to the ground.