User:RuneLai/Sandbox

The coup d'état (クーデター) was a military uprising against the Royal Government in response to the growing efforts to dissolve the Survey Corps. This resulted in the old monarchy being overthrown and the Reiss family, the true royal bloodline, returning to prominence in the public eye with Historia Reiss being crowned Queen of the Walls.

Prelude
The Survey Corps discovered the presence of a Titan inside of Wall Rose following the capture of the Female Titan. Due to the intervention of Minister Nick to prevent it from awakening, Commander Erwin Smith learned that there were people within the Walls aware of secrets hidden from the general populace.

Nick was taken with the Survey Corps when they left Stohess District and Hange Zoë placed him in the Trost District military barracks under a fake background while the operations to retrieve Historia Reiss and rescue Eren Yeager were in effect.

In the aftermath of the Wall Rose invasion, Dot Pixis met with a recuperating Erwin and discussed the evacuation situation. The emergency food supplies for Wall Rose's refugees were exhausted within a week. There were clashes with the Military Police and the people of the Walls got a glimpse of the tensions that could have boiled over had the breach been for real.

Levi Ackerman rebuilt his squad with a specialized task in mind, guarding Eren Yeager, who they now knew had the power to control Titans, and Historia Reiss who had a unknown connection to the secrets of the Walls. His new squad consisted of the remaining members of the top ten from the 104th Training Corps and Armin Arlert and they set up their base of operations in a remote forest cabin.

The First Interior Squad
Hange Zoë received word of Minister Nick's murder and rushed to the Trost District military barracks to discover an investigation by the Military Police Brigade. Though quickly pushed out of the crime scene, Hange saw that all of Nick's fingernails had been pulled out. She learned that the soldiers guarding the door, Djel Sannes and Ralph, were not local to Trost, but part of the Military Police's First Interior Squad.

They attempted to cover up the murder as a robbery because Nick was a Wallist and their holy objects were made of valuable iron, but in doing so they revealed they knew too much about him to be an unrelated party. Hange had listed Nick's background as a chairmaker on his room application and ensured that he had no belongings related to the Church of the Walls when he arrived.

Soon after, Erwin took a carriage into the capital, Mitras, to speak with the chancellery. He invited Commander Nile Dok of the Military Police to come with him and asked him about the First Interior Squad and the murder of Minister Nick. Nile was unaware of the murder and told Erwin the First Interior Squad had a separate reporting structure independent from his branch of the Military Police. Erwin then warned Nile that their world was about to change and he would have to choose who to trust.

At the meeting with the chancellery, it became clear to Erwin that the government officials were not interested in protecting humanity so much as protecting their positions and their estates. Any threat to that, Titan or human, was to be eliminated.

Kidnappings
Erwin sent word of his planned coup to the newly reformed Squad Levi. Levi Ackerman escaped along with his team members from their remote cabin before associates of the First Interior Squad could capture them. They headed for their rendezvous point in Trost District where they found the town in terrible shape. The people blamed the Survey Corps and the Titans for the loss of business and social stability. In the middle of the confrontation, a carriage barged through and kidnapped two members of Squad Levi.

Having anticipated this, the kidnapped victims were not Eren Yeager and Historia Reiss, but a disguised Jean Kirstein and Armin Arlert. Levi and his squad tracked the kidnappers to their hideout and successfully captured their ringleader, who turned out to be Dimo Reeves, the head of the Reeves Company. Reeves confessed that he did not want to help the Interior Squad so much as he was forced to. He considered Trost his town and gave people work. If he had not cooperated, the company would have been seized by the government, his employees thrown into the street, and the lives of him and his subordinates would have been forfeit.

Understanding the stakes and Reeves' resentment of the Interior Military Police, Levi proposed a deal. They would hand over Eren and Historia so the Reeves Company could survive, and in exchange the Reeves Company would join the Survey Corps in opposing the royal government, they would trust the Survey Corps, and they would give the Survey Corps priority access to luxury goods. Reeves considered it a greedy bargain, but accepted. As the first part of that deal, he lured Djel Sannes and Ralph into a trap by promising them that he had Eren cornered in a cave. This allowed Levi and Hange's squads to kidnap them for interrogation.

At a different rural cabin from before, Hange and Levi tortured Sannes to inflict the same pain to him as he had to Minister Nick. Only after that did they ask about the importance of the Reiss family and why they were entrusted with the secret of the Walls rather than the royal family. Sannes refused to break. He admitted he should be killed for the torture he had inflicted and lives he had taken, but thanks to the First Interior Squad, the people within the Walls have never known war. Everything he had done to suppress knowledge and technology had been out of devotion to the king.

Outwardly disgusted by his willingness to die, Hange, Levi, and Moblit left Sannes strapped in his chair and exited the room, leaving the door open a crack. On the other side, they forced Ralph to read from a script while he was unaware that Sannes was close enough to hear. Following the script, Ralph confessed to talking to the Survey Corps and voiced disgust for Sannes and his fanaticism. The next morning, Hange and Levi returned to Sannes and found his spirit broken by Ralph's assumed betrayal. Sannes confessed the Reiss family was the true royal family within the Walls.

Erwin's Plan
Five days after his summons to the chancellery, while Hange and Levi were busy with their interrogation, Erwin met with Dot Pixis to suggest the overthrow of the royal government. From the attempted kidnapping of Eren and Historia, it was clear the monarchy would do anything to obtain them with no regard to the security of its people.

Pixis was dismayed at the thought of humans turning against each other within the Walls. He acknowledged that the Survey Corps was likely capable of taking the capital by force, but there would still be a battle against the nobles of other regions and any remaining Military Police. Life under the current government had not been all that bad, even allowing for current circumstances. In a 107 years there had been no riots and the king was the symbol of that peace. Removing him would start a war.

Erwin confessed he did plan to replace the king, but he would do so without using an armed force and without killing, piquing Pixis' interest. However, he needed a little time for some information to be confirmed, so he told Pixis a story about how his father had been killed by the Military Police for his unorthodox line of questioning. Erwin's father had a theory that the memories of the people of the Walls' had been tampered with. Even if humanity had lost all written knowledge prior to their arrival 107 years ago, the first generation should have been able to teach that history to their children.

It had been only a hypothesis before, but given that Eren and the Female Titan had displayed a limited ability to control Titans, and that they now knew that humans and Titans were connected, Erwin concluded that Titans might not be the only thing affected by their "screams." The royal government's interference with Survey Corps activity only spiked after Eren manipulated the Titans. Erwin had hoped that there was no need for fighting between the Survey Corps and the government, but after his visit to the chancellery he found it to be too corrupt to be worth handing Eren over.

Nifa arrived shortly thereafter with the results of Hange and Levi's interrogation and handed their message over to Erwin, confirming his suspicions. They could replace the current king with Historia Reiss, of the true royal family.

Erwin forms a plan to track to track down Rod Reiss, Historia's father and the true ruler of the Walls. The Survey Corps would guarantee his safety in exchange for cooperation and see if Rod had an understandable reason for his actions. Erwin acknowledged that the Survey Corps could be wrong, but without knowing, they needed to press on and force people to recognize that the current system was a lie. Only then could they focus on reclaiming Wall Maria.

Pixis considered and told Erwin that as long as it was possible the government's secret could aid humanity, he could not allow Garrison soldiers to die in the operation. Without their knowledge, it was possible the military would not be able to successfully take their place. However he agreed to Erwin's proposal to let the officials show their true colors so they can decide whether or not they are worthy of the power they hold.

Nifa returned to the cabin where Hange and Levi were hiding their squads to find that Hange had departed with a question for Erwin. To those remaining, which included Dimo and his son Flegel Reeves, Nifa explained Erwin's plan to replace the king. Though initially reluctant, Historia agreed to become queen.