Who are the Nine Titans in Attack on Titan?
The Nine Titans are nine distinct powers, each with its own form, size and ability. Unlike pure titans, whoever inherits one keeps their human mind and chooses when to transform: they are weapon, symbol and sentence all at once.
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The Nine Titans are the nine powers into which Ymir Fritz's strength split at her death: the Founding, Attack, Colossal, Armored, Female, Beast, Cart, Jaw and War Hammer Titans. Only a Subject of Ymir can inherit one, every bearer lives thirteen years from the moment they receive it, and when they die the power passes to whoever devours them — or is reborn in a random newborn.
Where the Nine Titans come from
It all starts with Ymir Fritz, the first person ever to gain the power of the titans, some two thousand years ago. When she died that single power did not go out: it broke into nine, and each fragment stayed tied to a line of heirs. With those nine, Eldia built an empire that ruled the continent for seventeen hundred years.
The arrangement broke in the Great Titan War. Marley exploited the war of succession between the noble houses that carried the Nine and, thirteen years later, held seven of them. The Founding Titan was not among those seven: the 145th king carried it off to an island, raised three walls with it and erased his own people's memory.
From that day the Nine stop being a bloodline and become a military programme. Marley trains Eldian children to inherit them, and the Attack Titan ends up crossing the sea on its own when Eren Kruger hands it to Grisha Yeager with an order: get the Founder back.
The Nine Titans, one by one
Each power is named after its most recognisable trait, and the trait is not decoration: it decides what the titan is good for on a battlefield, and why Marley deploys them the way it does. A Colossal does not get sent where a Cart gets sent.
None of them is interchangeable, which is why the war is not decided by how many titans a side holds but by which ones. Marley loses the War Hammer in a single afternoon and half its advantage goes with it.
| The trait it is named for | What it lets its bearer do | Last bearer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founding | The original power, the one left at the head of the other eight. | Commands every titan at once and rewrites the memory and bodies of the Subjects of Ymir. Full use demands royal blood. | Eren Yeager |
| Attack | A fifteen-metre body with nothing remarkable about it except which way it always goes. | Reaches the memories of its future inheritors: the only one that fights already knowing what happens next. | Eren Yeager |
| Colossal | The largest of the Nine by a distance — taller than the walls themselves. | Its transformation is a blast of heat and steam that flattens whatever is in front of it. It kicked Wall Maria open. | Armin Arlert |
| Armored | Hardened plating over most of its body, like living armour. | Takes what none of the others can take and charges gates and walls — used as both battering ram and shield, and able to transfer its bearer's consciousness. | Reiner Braun |
| Female | The most versatile: fast, precise, able to harden only the part it needs. | Mimics other titans' traits and calls pure titans with a scream, turning them into a steered avalanche. | Annie Leonhart |
| Beast | With Zeke's Beast Titan, an ape-like body and an arm built to throw — unlike the other eight, its shape changes from bearer to bearer. | Throws projectiles with artillery accuracy and turns Eldians into pure titans with its spinal fluid. | Zeke |
| Cart | Four legs and stamina no other titan comes close to. | Stays transformed for months on end and hauls supplies, artillery and whole squads. | Pieck Finger |
| Jaw | Compact and brutally fast, claws and teeth ahead of everything else. | Tears through almost anything, including the hardened crystal none of the others can break. | Falco Grice |
| War Hammer | It manufactures instead of armouring: hardening used as a workshop. | Grows weapons and structures of hardened flesh at range, and its bearer can pilot it from outside the nape. | Eren Yeager |
Who has held each of the Nine
A titan power has no owner: it has a list. The same force moves from one body to the next every thirteen years at most, and much of the series is a matter of following that list — who receives it, who steals it, and who is carrying it without knowing.
Some chains are long and orderly, like the Founder's, which runs down the Reiss royal line until Grisha cuts it short in the chapel. Others are short and ugly: the Jaw Titan changes hands four times and not one of the four was a planned handover.
Here is the full board, each power with its bearers in the order they received it.
Founding TitanThe royal line, and a theft
Ymir FritzThe first to hold the power, before it was divided into nine
Karl FritzThe 145th king carried the Founding Titan to Paradis and swore it off
Uri ReissThe gentle king who held the Founding Titan before Frieda
Frieda ReissFrieda bore the Founding Titan until it was torn away
Grisha YeagerGrisha tore the Founding Titan from Frieda in the Reiss chapel
Eren YeagerPassed to Eren the night he devoured his father
Attack TitanThree men, one same order
Colossal TitanFrom the Warrior to his enemy
Armored TitanThirteen years in one pair of hands
Female TitanA single bearer
Beast TitanFrom the laboratory to the front
Quadrupedal TitanThe Warrior nobody saw
Jaw TitanFour hands in thirteen years
War Hammer TitanA hundred years in one family
How a titan is inherited, and why it only lasts thirteen years
Inheriting one of the Nine is not receiving an object: it is eating whoever is carrying it. The candidate has to be a Subject of Ymir, transform into a pure titan and devour the living bearer. Only then do they get their human body back with the power inside it.
Fragments of every previous bearer's memories come with it, and that is where much of the damage lives: Eren inherits from Grisha a past he never lived and a mission nobody explained to him.
If a bearer dies undevoured the power is not lost: it resurfaces in a randomly chosen newborn Subject of Ymir, and the cycle starts again somewhere in the world.
A Subject of Ymir is given the serum
Only someone of Ymir's people can transform at all. The titan serum turns them into a pure titan: huge, mindless and with no memory of who they were.
The pure titan devours the bearer
The transformation alone is not enough. The power only changes hands when that titan eats the current bearer, alive.
The inheritor gets their body back
They come out of the titan in human form, carrying the power and fragments of the memories of everyone earlier in the chain.
The countdown starts
From that instant they have thirteen years to live, whatever their age. This is Ymir's curse, and no bearer has ever dodged it.
If nobody devours them, the power is reborn
When a bearer dies without being eaten, their titan resurfaces in a random newborn Subject of Ymir, anywhere in the world.
Which of the Nine Titans is the strongest
The short answer is the Founding Titan, and not by a small margin. The other eight are bodies with abilities; the Founder is a key that opens every Subject of Ymir at once, anywhere in the world, without needing to be in the room.
The long answer is that for most of the series the Founder is worth nothing. Karl Fritz bound a vow never to use it again into the power itself, and its command only wakes with royal blood: Eren carries it inside him for years without being able to touch it.
Outside that case the comparison is not settled by raw strength but by reach — what each titan can do at the distance it actually fights at.
| Founding | Beast | Attack | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What makes it strong | Commands every titan at once and can rewrite the bodies of an entire people. | Living artillery: throws at enormous range and turns any Eldian nearby into a pure titan. | Takes instructions from its own future inheritors. It fights already knowing how this ends. |
| What limits it | It needs royal blood, and the 145th king's vow kept it switched off for a century. | Up close it is vulnerable, and it depends on others covering it. | Its body is ordinary: fifteen metres with no plating, no range and no tricks. |
| How it has been stopped | It has no counter of its own. The only way through was reaching its bearer's body. | With a suicide charge at close range, paid for with an entire squad. | With another of the Nine on top of it: the War Hammer took its head off in Liberio. |
Which titans are not part of the Nine
Most of the titans on screen are not one of the Nine at all. Pure titans are Subjects of Ymir converted by force: no will, no memory of who they were, and no way back to being human on their own.
The Wall Titans are their own case: tens of thousands of colossal titans hardened shoulder to shoulder into the three walls of Paradis. They are the Founder's reserve, and they have spent a century waiting for an order.
And then there are the accidents. Rod Reiss's titan was the largest ever seen and was not one of the Nine: it was what a badly drunk serum did to a body with no designated inheritance.
- Pure titan
- A Subject of Ymir turned into a titan with no will and no memory. It is the intermediate state every inheritor passes through.
- Subject of Ymir
- A descendant of Ymir Fritz. The only bloodline that can become a titan, and therefore the only one that can inherit one of the Nine.
- Wall Titan
- One of the thousands of hardened colossal titans that make up the walls of Paradis. They answer to the Founder, not to a bearer of their own.
- The Paths
- The space outside time that connects every Subject of Ymir. Inheritance travels through it, and so does the Founder's voice.
- Ymir's curse
- The thirteen-year limit attached to any of the nine powers — the same span Ymir Fritz held hers.
What happens to the Nine Titans at the end
In the final phase, three of the Nine are in the same body. Eren has carried the Founding and the Attack Titans since the wood where he devoured his father, and he tears the War Hammer out of Lara Tybur in Liberio. When Ymir gives him everything she has, the body that assembles itself in Shiganshina is no longer a fifteen-metre titan: it is the thing that walks in the Rumbling.
Facing it are the other six, split between the two sides that end up allied: Armin with the Colossal, Reiner with the Armored, Annie with the Female, Pieck with the Cart, Falco with the Jaw, and Zeke with the Beast, on Eren's side until he no longer is.
And that is where the count ends. With the death of the Founder's bearer the power of the titans goes out entirely: the Nine stop existing and every titan in the world becomes a person again, in the same instant.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Nine Titans?
The Founding, Attack, Colossal, Armored, Female, Beast, Cart, Jaw and War Hammer Titans. They are the nine fragments of Ymir Fritz's power, and there is not a tenth.
Who can inherit one of the Nine Titans?
Only a Subject of Ymir — a descendant of Ymir Fritz. Nobody outside that bloodline can become a titan at all, however much serum they are given.
How is a titan inherited?
The candidate transforms into a pure titan and devours the living bearer. If a bearer dies undevoured, the power is reborn in a randomly chosen newborn Subject of Ymir.
Why do bearers only live thirteen years?
Because of Ymir's curse: no bearer survives more than thirteen years after receiving the power — the same span Ymir Fritz held hers. The count starts at inheritance, not at birth.
Which of the Nine Titans is the strongest?
The Founding Titan, because it commands every titan and can rewrite the Subjects of Ymir themselves. The catch is that its full power demands royal blood, and for most of the series it is locked.
Can one person hold more than one titan?
Yes. Eren Yeager ends up carrying three at once: the Founding, the Attack and the War Hammer. He is the only case in the story.
Are all intelligent titans one of the Nine?
Yes. The Nine are precisely the titans with inheritable power and human intelligence; everything else is a mindless pure titan, a Wall Titan, or an accident like Rod Reiss's titan.
What happens to the Nine Titans at the end?
They cease to exist. When the Founder's bearer dies, the power of the titans is extinguished entirely and every titan in the world becomes a person again in the same instant.
- TIT·002Titans
Who are the Subjects of Ymir, the Eldians of Attack on TitanThe Subjects of Ymir are Ymir Fritz's descendants and the only people who can be transformed into titans. Beyond Paradis, different states identify them as Eldians; Marley confines them in internment zones and uses the possibility of transformation to justify segregation, military recruitment and propaganda. - TIT·003Titans
What is the Ackerman clan in Attack on Titan?Two of the show's best soldiers share a surname and are not close relatives. That coincidence, which reads as chance for dozens of episodes, turns out to be the tip of an entire bloodline: people with titan strength who never become titans, and whom the power that governs everyone else cannot touch. - TRA·002Plot & ending
What is Zeke's euthanasia plan?The euthanasia plan is the most uncomfortable answer the story gives to the question of how the titans end: not by killing anyone, but by making sure nobody else is born. It is Zeke Yeager's real objective, the one hiding behind the deal Paradis believed it had signed, and the secret engine of almost everything that happens in the fourth season. - MUN·001The world
What are the walls in Attack on Titan and why do they exist?On a first reading, the walls are the colossal defence that lets humanity survive the titans: three concentric rings roughly fifty metres tall, sheltering the last known civilisation. That is the apparent truth Attack on Titan opens with, and it carries the emotional weight of the show's first half.
