Dependent and Distressed, or A Royal to Impress? Complexity in Kudrun

                                                                  

The damsel in distress in a general sense defines stories that involve the salvation of women through the means of a male hero. When we apply this term in a broader sense to female royalty, what tends to come to mind are stories in which royal women are saved from turmoil by the actions of their male counterparts. This is surely one interpretation of the story of Kudrun, set in the Kingdom of Ireland, surrounding the family of King Sigebant, Queen Uote, and their descendants. The story involves exciting tournaments, spontaneous kidnappings, and unsurprisingly, marriage and power. I beg the question, why exactly must we always apply a negative connotation to adjacent power, or power acquired from the actions of another? Although the women in this story exist secondary to the men in their lives, painting the women in this narrative as simply damsels in distress, prizes for which men vie is an oversimplification. In this article, we will explore the ways in which these royal women gain and maintain their power and status, perhaps in a more indirect way, through empowerment through protection. 

We begin this narrative with King Sigebant, who marries a Norwegian princess named Uote. As a result, Uote receives hundreds of warriors because of the King’s reputation. Within the story’s very beginnings, there is a precedent set of adjacent power between the King and the Queen. Although the Queen is royal in her own right, her material power and influence in Ireland firstly comes from her husband, and by association his men. However, the strength and protection these men provide further empowers her, and keeps her from vulnerability. Unlike the damsel in distress, often used to enrich the male ego, the story frames Uote as more than a device to display her husband’s own power. He must be knighted first, declared as a strong and noble warrior to be worthy of protecting her. Queen Uote understands her own power through this form of strength well; she even encourages the King to fight his warriors in frequent tournaments, and he agrees, because he vows to please her. People from various realms come to fight and display their wealth and strength for her benefit, as she sits from above. She controls her own protection and reminds the men of her kingdom and elsewhere of their commitment and duty to serve and defend.

Further along in the narrative, Uote’s son Hagen encounters three imprisoned maidens after being kidnapped by a griffin. These women serve as the second example of empowerment through protection with added complexity. In this particular scenario, the women are not exercising their status as royals, but as captives. In order to acquire this power through protection, they must first provide for young Hagen. This complicates the damsel in distress trope: the women are not unsuspectingly saved, but rather take an active role in their own protection. Subverting traditional gender roles, they provide Hagen with food and shelter and shape him into a man. In return, Hagen fights off monsters, provides the women with sustenance as he develops into a man. This physically empowers the women through protection. The women are equally empowered through political protection, as Hagen works to restore their status as princesses when the group is taken as prisoners by a sea vessel. He adds the princesses to his court, and the women are showered with gifts and dressed in rich robes. They find themselves in greater positions of political authority and empowered through this new position and physical appearance. 

Hagen chooses to marry Hilde of India, one of the three maidens, further strengthening her power. Unlike his predecessors, the nature of their relationship is tied directly to a sense of protection Hagen feels for Hilde, and vice versa. While a sense of loyalty and a shared experience of growing up together are motivators for Hagen’s marriage proposal, protection is at the heart of their relationship. Hagen argues that she earned his protection through these dangerous experiences. Hagen is encouraged to be knighted when they marry, another testament to his role as her protector, and Hilde takes charge of Hagens warriors, enhancing her level of protection beyond her husband, but also to his six hundred men. There is even a greater level of commitment Hagen feels to his wife, than perhaps his father did to his mother, as he decides to be her protector in less-than-ideal circumstances. 

These two examples of royal women empowered by the power of protection blend together in the character and actions of Hagen’s daughter, Young Hilde. Young Hilde is empowered through protection through her defined status as a royal like her grandmother Uote, but plays an active role in the direction of this power in a common sense, like her mother, Hilde. Because she is the daughter of King Hagen: strict parent and iron-fisted ruler, her status lends itself to protection against exploitative enemies and weak suitors. The foreign King Hotel thus sends a brigade of men and cunning messengers to retrieve the Princess and offer her a new layer of protection. A surface reading of the story thus would suggest that the damsel in distress trope manifests itself here as well: as an illustration of King Hetel’s male ego. After all, why else would he send an embassy, envoys, warriors of the hundreds, and risk the depletion of his resources and the lives of his subjects for a girl he’s never met in person?

 

Young Hilde, however, does not limit herself. Despite morally ambiguous methods, Hetel's pining still empowers her. A win is a win. In a similar fashion to her mother, she consents to the kidnapping, protects, and conspires along with her captors. In return, they secure her marriage, and therefore protection to King Hetel. When a gruesome battle erupts between Hagen and King Hetel, her role as the precious daughter of Hagen and as Hetel’s companion that Hilde has actively shaped herself into being, allows her to end the conflict between the two men. Through several generations of the royal lineage, we can observe women finding empowerment through the protection their male counterparts display. Although this is a more indirect form of power, it still breaks the confines of the damsel in distress reading that could seem to apply here.