Heralkes.

How does the Anna Russell line go about Siegfried? Very strong, very
handsome .... very stupid. The same can be said about Herk. And it is
not unfair to say Wagner's Siegfried is a very late Germanic reflex of
Herakles.

As has been said, he is a blend, the Heinz 57 of Greek myth. His
ten/twelve labors do correspond to the Zodiac (confer with Robert
Graves' views). Graves wrote more than 50 years ago, and his views
were based on scholarship that dates back 100 years (had he know of
the Child of the Waters, his thoughts on Theseus and Minos, and his
absolute spazz-out over Vergil's Aristeus would have been written
quite differently; he'd'a pro'ly added Lip-less Achilles to the mix).

Graves (and to some degree, Gimbutas) saw Herakles as the divine king
married to the [representative of the] goddess Hera/Big Momma. In
places where the goddess/priestess was gonna get raped and
killed unless she had a big beefy war-leader as consort, said consort
stuck around for a few years, especially if he was very good at war.
I'm suggesting the merger of raw patriarchialism and raw
matriarchalism (whatever your definitions of the terms) was a marriage
of political necessity: official religion adjusted itself to these
facts.

The stories of Herakles do portray him as something of an oaf. One
wonders if the skald/poet was having fun. But, the big dumb loveable
natural-leader of a hunk-lunk is a archetype of human literature.