Based loosely on the medieval Germanic Nibelungenlied and Norse epics, this modern treatment discards, or provides motives for some of the indiscriminate killings in those epics, and fleshes out the characters of the principals. When the all-powerful queen Gudrun invites the known feudal kings and lords of the time, including her brothers, to festival celebrations in a huge central castle, they willingly assume she is guided by love, and a longing to be reunited with the kinsmen from her homeland. Her beauty and gracious charm disguise her hidden purpose of making all pay for the crime of a few, the murdering of her former husband Siegfried. The nexus provided by this obsession, its impact on the internecine conflicts of her guests, and her manipulation of their own primal desires, weaves a tapestry of love, hate, sexual yearning, hubris and revenge, as poignant as life itself. The protagonists" thoughts and emotions are made even more vivid by their personification as the forces of nature, voiced in a stirring and fluent poetry that is both timely and timeless.