User blog comment:Xxkiiroxx/"Shingeki no Kyojin is Set in North America" Theory/@comment-25820699-20160607035510

None of these points invalidate the North America idea, but I see a few flaws in the finer details of your analysis.

I) If you look on the interactive map, Wall Maria fits perfectly over Europe if the west district is in Prussia (Germany/Austria; the place of origin for most of the characters' names). The south district (Shiganshina) would then be in Dalmatia/Macedonia (Hungary/Greece, just north of the Ionian Sea, and the fabled homeland of the Titans of Greek myth; also home to the river Vardar, which may be the large river mentioned in OVA3), and the north district is just south of the Baltic (which would explain the few characters with Norsk names, like Ymir), and the Alps running throughout the southwest quadrant. Now, to me, that seems like a perfectly reasonable candidate for the location of the Empire. Of course, there are also plenty of places it could go within the Eurpopean portions of former Soviet holdings as well, but those areas don't meet the climate and biome specs of the Walls. Europe also has a number of landlocked countries. The unfamiliarity of saltwater wouldn't be a surprise given that the Survey Corps never make it very far from base.

II) The text stating that the year is 850 doesn't necessarily mean 850CE. In fact, it can't. People in the ninth century did not have the technical abilities to produce even the simplest products of the SnK universe (the kinds of fabrics and textiles depicted, for example). Also, potatoes, a dietary staple of the Empire, wouldn't be grown in Europe until the establishment of contact with Mesoamerica, which wouldn't happen until Cortes lead the Aztec Revolution against Motecuzoma II. Clearly, some other time scale is being used, and perhaps even a different calendar system besides the Gregorian twelve-months-of-thirty-days format. For example, they might use some sort of lunar calendar, since lunar calendars are easier to track and were more popular among pre-Copernican societies. All that really matters though is that your statement that the series is set in "850AD" just can't be true. Now, knowing that the Empire make a habit of rewriting history, I see no reason they couldn't have retrodated some new timescale to start in the mid-700s or something. Most likely though, this is just a completely alternate universe with a completely separate history (or even a completely separate geography) from our own--perhaps one in which Constantine didn't split the Roman Empire, and thus, the Dark Ages never happened, allowing ninth century Europeans to posess technology those in our universe wouldn't get until the eighteenth century. A universe so vastly different from our own would make any attempt to bring in real life historical evidence a fruitless expenditure.

Again, not saying your proposal is invalid; just saying some of your reasons for ruling out Europe are ill founded.

Still, I like the idea, especially since that would put the royal court somewhere near my home in the greater St. Paul/Minneapolis metro area.