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Rod Reiss in Attack on Titan

Patriarch of the Reiss family, secret head of the true royal bloodline and father of Historia.

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Complete record: Rod Reiss

The complete dossier below ignores your selected episode and contains end-of-series revelations.

Complete record

  1. Profile

    Rod Reiss is the unassuming patriarch of the Reiss family, secretly the head of the true royal bloodline that has ruled the Walls from the shadows for a century, and the father of Historia.

  2. Revealed by S3·E10

    The Pact His Brother Left Him

    Long before the chapel, Rod lived in the shadow of his brother Uri, who held the Founding Titan and kept Kenny — the killer he had spared — at his side as a companion rather than a servant. When Uri died the arrangement fell to Rod, who held the Ackerman close by dangling the one thing he never meant to hand over: a Titan serum and a power of Kenny's own.

  3. Revealed by S3·E6

    The Night the Reiss Died

    The attack Rod describes killed almost his entire family. Grisha broke into the Reiss Chapel and killed Frieda, Rod's wife and the other children gathered there. Rod alone escaped. His actions since that night have centred on restoring the bloodline.

  4. Revealed by S3·E3

    The Daughter He Sent Away

    Years earlier Rod fathered a child with Alma, a servant hidden on a remote farm, and acknowledged neither of them. When he came for the girl, Kenny and the Interior's men intercepted them. Rod denied that mother or daughter belonged to his household, and Kenny killed Alma before the child. Rod saved his daughter's life only by sending her away under the false name Christa Lenz.

  5. Revealed by S3·E2

    The Order to Seize Them

    From behind the throne, Rod sets the Interior government hunting Eren and Historia, and it is his written message — read out to the assembly in King Fritz's name — that announces their capture. The nobles debate the search for them while the man who ordered it never has to appear.

  6. Revealed by S3·E6

    Guardians of the Founding Power

    In the Reiss chapel hidden beneath the earth, Rod explains that his family has long guarded the Founding Titan, the original Titan power, and that five years earlier Grisha attacked the Reiss and tore that power away.

  7. Revealed by S3·E7

    A Father's Desperate Plan

    Determined to reclaim the Founding Titan for his family, Rod pressures Historia to devour Eren and inherit the power. When she refuses him, Rod drinks a Titan serum himself.

  8. Revealed by S3·E9

    The Fall of the Reiss

    Rod's monstrous Titan is brought down near Orvud District by the Survey Corps and the newly crowned Historia, ending both his life and his family's hidden grip on the throne.

  9. Titan identity

    Rod Reiss's Titan

  10. Final fate

All linked characters

  • Krista Lenz — Father and hidden daughter of the true royal bloodline
  • Frieda Reiss — Father and eldest daughter, keepers of the Reiss legacy
  • Uri Reiss — Brothers of the Reiss royal line
  • Alma — The mistress he never acknowledged and let the Interior silence
  • Rod Reiss's Titan — The monstrous, formless Titan Rod becomes
  • Eren Yeager — Sought to sacrifice Eren to reclaim the Founding Titan
  • King Fritz — The true king and the figurehead seated in his place