Brunhild proclaims the conditions upon which she may be won. The hero who wishes to win her to wife must conquer her in three games: spear throwing, stone throwing, and leaping. If he fails in one of the three tests he must lose his head. Gunther declares himself ready for the trial though he feels that his strength is not equal to the superhuman power of Brunhild. Siegfried comes to his friend's assistance, and clad in his Tarn-cap which he had won from the Nibelung treasure, and which makes him invisible, he undertakes the task while Gunther merely executes the gesture of the action. Brunhild is defeated and with forebodings of evil follows the Burgundian king to Worms where a joyful double marriage is celebrated. Then Siegfried takes his bride to Xanten, his capital, where he passes ten years of peace and happiness. But the Norns, the Fates, have decreed that his joy shall not endure. King Gunther invites his friend and his sister to a great festival at Worms at the time of the summer solstice. On the eleventh day before Vespers, during the walk to church, a fatal quarrel breaks out between the queens. The quarrel is precipitated by a question of precedence. Brunhild, consumed by jealousy of Siegfried's heroic fame and Kriemhilde's happiness, insultingly taunts the latter that her consort is after all but a vassal of Gunther, an accusation which Kriemhilde violently rejects. The two queens part with vehement words. Kriemhilde threatens:
'"Since thou hast my Siegfried claimed as thy subject now,
So shall this very day the knights of both kings see,
Whether, before the Queen, the church I enter may.'"
Arrived at the same moment at the entrance to the church, Brunhild calls out to her sister-in-law:
"'Before wife of a monarch, a subject shall not go.'"
Kriemhilde, forgetting herself and all about her, breaks out in terrible passion:
"'Couldst thou have kept silent, 't would have been for thy good.
Thou hast thyself dishonored thine own body fair;
How could a concubine as a king's wife appear?'