Anti-Marleyan Volunteers
“We serve whoever can end it”
The Anti-Marleyan Volunteers are the defectors of Attack on Titan: soldiers of the mainland's own army who crossed the sea to help the island they were raised to fear.
They bring engines, aircraft and everything the island has spent a century without. The island houses them, uniforms them, puts them to work and does not take its eyes off them for a moment.
Also known as Anti-Marleyan Volunteers · the Volunteers · the defectors
- Base
- Paradis, as guests of the island
- Role
- Technical support and leverage
- Type
- Volunteer corps
The record
Role in the story
Who the Volunteers are
The Volunteers are people from Marley and from the territories it has swallowed who concluded that their own state was the thing that had to be stopped, and acted on it by crossing to the island. Some are Eldians from the districts; several are not, and came out of countries the mainland conquered on its way up.
On Paradis they are indispensable and never quite trusted. They arrive as the island's only source of modern engineering, they are given quarters, uniforms and work, and they are watched.
Why it matters in the story
The Volunteers are how the outside world stops being a rumour and becomes a technology. Aircraft, engines and rail arrive with them, and the island's strategic position changes from hopeless to merely desperate almost overnight.
They are also the first time the walls have to decide what to do with people who are useful and not theirs. Every soldier on the island was raised on a single story about who lives across the sea, and the people standing in front of them do not fit it at all.
The regiment
Hierarchy and members
0 revealed · 2 sealed
Turning points
Key events
0 revealed · 3 sealed
On the map
Key places
0 revealed · 3 sealed
Standing
Relations with other factions
0 revealed · 4 sealed
Across the story
How the faction changes
0 revealed · 3 sealed
Common questions
Frequently asked
Who are the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers in Attack on Titan?
Defectors from Marley and from the nations it conquered, who crossed to Paradis to work against their own state. They bring the island the modern engineering it has spent a century without.
What do the Volunteers bring Paradis?
Modern engineering, and the people who understand it: aircraft, engines, rail and port work. The island had spent a century unable to build any of it, and its strategic position changes almost overnight.
Are all the Volunteers Eldians?
No. Some are Eldians from the internment districts, and others come from countries the mainland power conquered on its way to the top — people with their own reasons to want that power stopped.
Other factions
All 2 members of Anti-Marleyan Volunteers — spoilers
Complete spoiler archive
Complete roster: Anti-Marleyan Volunteers
This index lists every member of Anti-Marleyan Volunteers, including those who haven't appeared at your episode yet. Open a dossier only when you're ready to cross that spoiler boundary.
The complete record
The Anti-Marleyan Volunteers are the defectors of Attack on Titan: soldiers of the mainland's own army who crossed the sea, and who did not defect to a country at all.
What they do not bring is a loyalty to the island: their allegiance is to one man and to the plan he has told them will end the war, and the difference becomes the whole problem.
Who they actually serve
The Volunteers did not defect to a country. They defected to a person: the commander who recruited them, promised them an end to the war and never told them what ending it would require. Their discipline, their competence and their patience all belong to him, and the island's government is a facility they are working inside. That is the fault line the whole faction rests on. Everything they do for the island is genuine and everything they do for the island is instrumental, and the moment those two stop pointing the same way, the Volunteers do not hesitate about which one they were.
Complete arc
Guests with engines
The island meets them as technicians: the people who can make an aircraft fly and a port work, living among soldiers who were taught the sea was the edge of the world. The relationship is cordial, useful and slightly unreal on both sides.
Loyal to a plan, not a place
What the Volunteers were actually recruited for surfaces, and with it the fact that the island's guests have been running an operation inside it the whole time — one their own rank and file were only told the acceptable half of.
What was left of the cause
With their commander's plan overtaken by something larger and worse, the Volunteers are left holding a defection that no longer has a destination. What some of them do next is the only part of the faction that was ever really about the island.
Relations with other factions
- Marley — They are its own soldiers and its own subjects, which makes them the one enemy the nation cannot describe as foreign.
- Survey Corps — The regiment is their host, their protection and their cover, and for a while the arrangement is honestly good for both.
- Warriors — Two groups produced by the same state, sent in opposite directions, each convinced the other has been lied to.
- Yeagerists — The movement gives them the run of the island and they give it aircraft and engineers; neither side is under any illusion that this is friendship.
