 Gradually, he is drawn into close involvement and feels protective towards the Goths (many of them are his own descendants because of a brief and poignant liaison with a Gothic, girl who dies in childbirth).The Goths identify him as the god Odin/Wodan.He finds that he must cruelly betray his beloved Goths since a ballad says that Odin did so; failure to fulfill his prescribed role might change history and bring the whole of the actual 20th century crashing down.