Royalty and kingdom
The idea of this poem is to explain mythically and poetically what kind of heroism when into forming and leading the Netherland. The characters are mostly royal, indicating the height of drama that the story intends. The royalty of the characters guides them to behave honorably. That doesn't mean that they don't commit actions of a drastic nature, but their bold, courageous decision-making seems to stem from their sense of royal authority.
Death and heroism
Heroism is depicted in the story as the acceptance of death. By acknowledging the ultimate seriousness of death, the story paints tragedies, like the deaths of Etzel, Siegfrid, and Kriemhild. These deaths are portraits of human life, because thematically, the poem seems to suggest to the reader that they also accept their mortality so they too can be heroic like Etzel, who doesn't crack under pressure, who doesn't betray the others even when it might save his life.
Marriage and love
Although there are pretty gruesome and tragic stories in this poetry, the main goals or thirsts of the characters in the poem are clearly love and marriage. Marriage is depicted in its royal sense, so that marriage is also dramatic and complicated, because marriages are important to the development of kingdoms, and that means that ending up with the right person is a serious issue to these titanic characters.
