John G. Deacon wrote:

>My apologies to Walter Meyer <[log in to unmask]> who asked me from whence
>Hagen had come.
>
>I should have written:
>
>>Alberich is a character and not a symbol (mythic or otherwise).  He
>>renounced sex and love for gold because he was too ugly to get laid
>>_often enough_.
>
>Hagen might have been a "solo performance" so please don't ask me how often
>Alberich would have thought adequate to have given it up for the gold.

As somebody on this or another Internet list pointed out, Alberich was just
about the only major character in the Ring w/ any integrity.  (Bruenhilde
might be another candidate.)

He renounced love (his siring of Hagen need not have been more than an
encounter of lust, rather than love) in exchange for the gold out of which
he fashioned the ring.

Wotan wants to cheat the Giants out of their bargain to build Walhalla; he
and Loge shamefully cheat Alberich out of the ring that he had secured fair
and square.

Hunding is a bullying, probably abusive husband.  Siegmund knowingly steals
his sister, Sieglinde, from her husband (who admittedly may not have
deserved her) not so much to emancipate her as to consummate his own
passions w/ her, to which she agrees.

Wotan, true to his nature double crosses Siegmund and lets him be killed by
Hunding, whom he then kills in turn.

Mime raised Siegfried for the sole purpose of having him secure the Ring
and Tarnhelm from the dragon before he intends to poison him.

Siegfried, is totally unappreciative of Mime who has raised him.  That his
lack of appreciation would prove justified could not have been known to
him.  He kills a dragon for no reason other than frustration at not having
been taught what fear was.

Hagen schemes, through potions inducing memory loss, to have Siegfried,
disguised as Gunther, win Bruenhilde, his own bride, for Gunther, thereby
setting Siegfried up w/ a pretext for later stabbing him in the back.
(Siegfried, whose loss of memory was not described as also extinguishing
his sense of ethics and morals, agreed to disguise himself as Gunther,
thereby with his own strength proving himself, as Gunther would never have
been able, to be a worthy bridegroom for Bruenhilde.) Gunther is a willing
accomplice in all this.

(My father told me that, as a schoolboy having to read the Niebelungenlied,
he got the highest mark in his class for an essay on whom he thought to be
the most admirable or laudable character in that epic, by arguing "none of
them".)

Walter Meyer