Siegfried is the legendary first king of Belka, a historical figure whose life has been embellished by centuries of mythical lore. His historicity has not been confirmed, but 12th Century records indicate that a nobleman from the Pendragon family united the region's petty kingdoms into the Kingdom of Belka, which collapsed and was reformed several centuries later as the Belkan Confederation after his death in battle against the breakaway fiefdoms of Gebet and Ustio.
Legendary accounts of Siegfried generally derive from Dem Tot von Siegfried, a 16th Century romantic work that was essentially an aggregation of contemporary Siegfried myths. According to Dem Tot, the Pendragons controlled a small kingdom in modern-day Dinsmark that was conquered shortly after Siegfried's birth. The court wizard fled to the remote village of Tauberg, bringing Siegfried to relative safety. There, Siegfried found the sword Excalibur driven into a rock and was unable to dislodge it. When he was a teenager the town came under attack as two local Dukes' armies converged on its location. Siegfried drew the sword from the stone and led the town's defenders, driving back the attacking factions. According to Dem Tot, he also slew a Lindworm with the sword and became nearly invincible by bathing in its blood.
Siegfried's defense of Tauberg won him the support of locals seeking self-determination from the more powerful kingdoms surrounding them, and several local towns banded together under the revived Pendragon dynasty's rule. Siegfried oversaw the construction of Stier Castle in the Waldreich Mountains, where he assembled the Round Table of allied nobles, to whom he promised relative self-determination under a feudal federation under his rule. Siegfried and the lords of the Round Table raised an army from their subjects and launched a war against their neighbors, culminating in the Siege of Dinsmark. As his military victories continued, the petty kingdoms swore fealty to Siegfried, who declared himself the King of Belka.
Siegfried is slain
Accounts of Siegfried's rule are scarce, and almost all information from this point is pure myth. Dem Tot claims that Siegfried gave birth to two sons, Axel and Mordred. Mordred grew jealous of his father's power and favoritism towards Axel and led an uprising in the southern province of Gebet, also enlisting the ethnolinguistically distinct Ustians to aid him. While the war generally went in Belka's favor, Axel either disappeared or was murdered, and Siegfried joined the fight himself.
Siegfried and Mordred met each other on the Hydrian Line
Erusean mythology, meanwhile, claims that Axel reappeared a decade later and became an advisor to King Harald I during his subjugation of Delarus.