Headscratchers / The Ring of the Nibelung

• If the ring has an omnipotent power, why its owners don't use the ring to just blast their enemies to pieces and avoid its theft?
  • Circumstances didn't allow it. The only person who has the ring stolen from him is Alberich, and he's tricked out of it before he can do anything. After that, his curse catches up with everyone else who comes into possession of the ring, such as Fafner and Siegfried. Fafner is foolish and overconfident enough to think he doesn't need the ring to stop Siegfried, and Siegfried is ignorant of danger and doesn't realize he's been betrayed by Brünnhilde.
• Why don't the other gods try to get away when the flames from Brünnhilde's pyre start to burn? Why do they just sit there and wait? Presumably none of them want to die, only Wotan does.
  • Possibility #1, following orders. Waltraute tells Brünnhilde that Wotan ordered the "nobles of Valhalla" to chop down the world-ash and pile the wood around the hall. Also that he has given up on collecting heroes, and that since he returned with his broken spear, everyone just sits around waiting. So perhaps he has obliged them to join him in death whether they want it or not.
  • Possibility #2, guilt. The gods generally were complicit in the corrupt bargain that resulted in Alberich's curse being let loose in the world. Others have taken the heroic actions to save the world; now they wish to purge themselves.
  • Possibility #3, redundancy. With Wotan's spear broken, they no longer rule the earth (even though men are still praying and sacrificing to them). With the ring returned to the Rhinemaidens, there will be no Ragnarök-style final battle with Alberich (which would've been hopeless if he'd gotten the ring back anyway, as he could've used it to turn the gods' army against them). They're too proud and fatalistic to cling to life under those circumstances, so they prefer to die with their glory instead of living with the shattered remains of it.
• The ring had already been stolen from Alberich when he put the curse on it. Where did he get the power to issue such a potent curse?
  • Fafner says that the Nibelung has done the giants "much mischief" even before he got the ring, and Alberich later reproves Mime by asking, "What have you, bumbler, ever known of the Black Art?" So Alberich had magical powers and skills before he even made the ring (or told Mime how to make the Tarnhelm). And the amount of hate he feels right then may give extra power to his curse, so that he can't perform feats like that all the time.
• Why did Siegfried have to kill Mime? Why couldn't he just knock the poison out of his hand and leave? Mime was no kind of physical threat to him, and he did raise him, regardless of his intentions.
  • Siegfried already hates Mime and is a bit of a Jerkass.
  • Also, Mime has brought him up on tales of "brave battles, daring deeds, and awesome arms," so as to raise him to be a dragonslayer. It's doubtful he ever taught him anything about "heroic restraint" (otherwise, he might start asking awkward questions, like, "What did this Fafner ever do to me?"). Truly Mime's own schemes came back to bite him.
    • Personally, I've always considered it overwhelmingly likely that Mime didn't just find Sieglinde dead or dying, but actually finished her off. This, being observed by baby Siegfried, would explain why the boy has grown up with an unconscious hatred of the slimy little bastard.
• Alberich is still alive at the end. What's to stop him from going back to the Rhinemaidens, stealing the ring, and starting the whole thing all over again? Especially now that the gods are dead and unable to oppose him.
  • I imagine the Rhinemaidens will keep a better watch over the gold now. Alberich even tells Hagen that if the ring goes back into the Rhine it can never be recovered.
• If Erda can see everything while she's sleeping, didn't she already know that Brünnhilde had been punished by Wotan to sleep? Why is it that she discovers about that when Wotan tells her?
• Why didn't Erda protest against the punishment of Brünnhilde when it was about to happen? Why didn't she come out of the earth and denounce Wotan of his falseness ("he stirred bold spirits yet he now punishes the bold") as he did later in Siegfried? If she can see everything, she must have noticed what was going on with her child.
• Starting on the last scene of Act 1 of Götterdämmerung, there are a couple of things that don't make any sense. First: why did Siegfried forcefully take the ring away from Brünnhilde? It wasn't on the orders of the Gibichungs; they just ordered him to bring Brünnhilde.
  • This is explained in the libretto: Brünnhilde was trying to use the ring to ward off Siegfried, so he took away from her.
    BRÜNNHILDE indem sie den Finger, an welchem sie Siegfrieds Ring trägt, drohend ausstreckt.
    Bleib fern! Fürchte dies Zeichen! Zur Schande zwingst du mich nicht, so lang der Ring mich beschützt.
  Stay away from me! Fear this token! You won't force me to shame as long as the ring protects me.
• Second: after he took the ring from Brünnhilde, why didn't he hand it over to Gunther? If he was disguised as him, then it's logic that after the Tarnhelm effect wears off it is Gunther that should bear the ring, so as to not blow Siegfried's cover (which eventually happened when Brünnhilde precisely noticed this detail).
  • The magic potion has so confused his mind that he has forgotten Brünnhilde entirely, and remembers the Ring only as the one he took from the dragon's hoard, without remembering that he gave it to Brünnhilde or even that he took it back from her. (That is presumably why he took it, as well: he dimly remembered it was "his Ring" without remembering how or why she had it, or even that she did have it.)
• Third: why did Siegfried have sex with Brünnhilde while disguised as Gunther? He has finished the scene saying that "Nothung will be witness of his loyalty to his oath, and its blade will separate him from Brünnhilde", but later Brünnhilde reveals that the sword hung on the wall all the time and they indeed had sex.
  • Don't forget, Siegfried looked like Gunther to Brünnhilde. And Siegfried later says he and Gunther switched places in the night. So Siegfried slept with his sword in between himself and Brünnhilde until Gunther came in and traded places, presumably while Brunnhilde was asleep. Then Gunther raped Brünnhilde after Siegfried had left.
    • I'm pretty sure Brünnhilde is referring to the sex that Siegfried and she shared at the end of Siegfried, as well as all the subsequent encounters in-between that and Götterdämmerung — all of which Siegfried has forgotten, due to the Zaubertrank, so that when she accuses him, he regards it entirely as some kind of crazy outburst.
• Fourth: why did he do that if he is under the effects of the potion and has fallen in love with Gutrune?
• Fifth: why don't the vassals and women lynch Siegfried and Brünnhilde upon discovering that they have "tainted the Gibichung's honor"?
  • They are taken by surprise, bewildered and confused, and are waiting for directions from their leaders, Gunther and Hagen.
• Sixth: why Brünnhilde still scolds Siegfried during her last speech, still saying that "he broke bonds and cheated on her", if Gutrune has just said explicitly that a potion made him forget about her?
  • Brünnhilde is in pretty full-on Heroic BSoD mode at that point and Gutrune's admission may have just not registered with her.
  • Even if done unwittingly, he still cheated on her in a sense.