Characters
Ymir Fritz in Attack on Titan
The first to hold the power of the Titans, ancestor of every Subject of Ymir and of the royal Fritz line.
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Complete record: Ymir Fritz
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Profile
The Eldian woman who first held the power of the Titans, eighteen centuries before the Walls were raised. Every Subject of Ymir descends from her — and no two peoples tell the same story about how she came by it.
Two Histories of the Same Woman
Two histories of her are taught and they cannot both be true: Marley's, in which she obtains the power from a devil and her descendants inherit the guilt, and the Restorationists' account shown to Grisha, in which she awakens the power herself and uses it to cultivate the land. The record keeps both, because neither was written by anyone who was there.
The First to Hold the Power
Eighteen centuries before the Walls, an Eldian woman receives the power of the Titans and becomes the first of her kind. The surviving histories use her origin to argue over who owned that power, whether her descendants inherited guilt and who is allowed to call themself human. Ymir has been dead for seventeen hundred years, so neither account can ask her.
Eighteen centuries before the Walls, an Eldian woman is hunted for sport until she falls into the roots of a tree, touches what waits in the water under it and is fused with the power of the Titans and becomes the first of her kind. Everything the world will argue about afterwards — whose power it is, who deserves to pay for it, who is allowed to call themselves human — begins with her, and nobody ever asked her, though she was there the whole time to be asked.
Her Spirit Became the Nine
When Ymir dies her spirit does not end with her: it divides into nine Titans, and the houses that inherit them raise the Eldian Empire on the strength of it. The Founding Titan is one of those nine — the one that can still command every other. Both surviving histories therefore centre the struggle for power on who controls it.
When Ymir dies her spirit does not end with her: it divides into nine Titans, and she dies stepping in front of a spear thrown at the man who owned her, who has her corpse fed to her own three daughters so the power will not stop with her. The Founding Titan is one of those nine — the one that can still command every other — which is why he could promise those girls their own daughters would eat them in turn, and be right for two thousand years.
The Blood That Still Answers
Every Eldian alive descends from her. That is what "the Subjects of Ymir" means, and it is how Marley can treat a fenced district full of strangers as one guilty body. The royal Fritz line carries her blood most directly, which is the whole reason Dina Fritz is worth more to the restorationists than any weapon they could steal.
Thirteen Years
Kruger tells Grisha the part Marley does not teach and the restorationists do not know: nobody who inherits one of the Nine lives more than thirteen years with it, because Ymir Fritz died thirteen years after receiving the power. Every holder since has been serving out the length of her life, whether or not anyone told them so.
A Name Given to a Beggar Girl
In Marley a cult keeps faith in her in secret, and when they find a nameless girl on the street they call her Ymir and bow to her as the founder come back. The girl never contradicts them. Public Security ships the whole cult to Paradis and turns them into Titans for it — the first thing Ymir Fritz's name ever gave anyone was a sentence.
The Village With Its Tongues Cut Out
Two thousand years ago Eldians came to her village, killed her parents and cut the tongues out of the people they kept. She grew up a slave among them with no name worth recording and no will anybody consulted — and everything the world has said about her since was decided by the people who did that to her.
She Built Him an Empire
For thirteen years she did whatever the king said with the most powerful body that had ever existed: bridges over mountains, fields cleared, and the armies of Marley wiped off the ground in an afternoon. He rewarded her by taking her as a concubine, and she bore him three daughters — Maria, Rose and Sina.
Two Thousand Years of Obedience
Death did not end the arrangement. In the world where the Coordinate sits she went on building, by hand, out of sand — every Titan that has ever existed, whenever a descendant of her owner asked for one. Twenty centuries of it, alone, because she was told to and nobody ever came to tell her she could stop.
You Can Decide
Zeke arrives holding royal blood and gives the order, and she obeys it the way she has obeyed every order for two thousand years — chaining Eren where he stands. Then Eren says the sentence nobody has said to her: she is not a slave and she is not a god, she is a person, and she does not have to serve anyone. She lets him go.
She Let the Spear Through
At the end she is thanked, which has never happened before, for the life she brought into the world. And in the last thing she is shown doing she goes back to the throne room and does it differently: she stands aside, lets the spear reach the king, and turns to comfort her three daughters. Then she is gone, after two thousand years of not being allowed to be.
Final fate
All linked characters
- Founding Titan — Her power, divided into nine — the Founder is the one that commands the rest
- Dina Fritz — The royal Fritz line descends from her; Dina is its last branch left in Marley
- Krista Lenz — The same blood, kept behind the Walls — the reason the Founder could answer again
- King Fritz I — The man who enslaved her, made her his concubine and fed her body to their daughters
- Eren Yeager — The first person to tell her she was not a slave and not a god; she chose him
- Zeke — Gave her a royal order after two thousand years of obedience, and was refused
