Warrior Unit

"Healthy boys and girls from ages five to seven will be gathered as potential Warriors!! Only a small few will become these chosen Warriors. For these Warriors—must be worthy of inheriting...the seven Titans now under the Marley government's control!"

- The Public Security Authorities of Marley announces the beginning of the new Warrior program

The Warrior Unit (戦士隊) was a special subdivision of the Marleyan military, composed of Subjects of Ymir under Marley's control who were given the power of the Titans.

Duty
The Marleyan Warriors were expected to carry out the needs of their superiors without question or objection. From a young age, Eldians were raised to believe that their race is responsible for all the wrongdoings in the history of the world, given the fact that they were the only humans capable of transforming into Titans, the catalysts for millennia of death and chaos. With this stigma in mind, Eldian children were at times offered up to the Marley government to become Warriors so that the families of accepted children may have been granted honorary Marleyan citizenship rather than face subjugation within isolated internment zones, such as the one in Liberio.

Warriors candidates who demonstrated the most exceptional performance on the battlefield were often said to be given the privilege of inheriting one of the seven Titans which Marley obtained during the Great Titan War. Due to the rarity of the Warriors, efforts were taken to ensure that they were not put into dangerous situations which could have led to the loss of one of Marley's Titans.

More recently, the Marley Warriors with the power of the Titans had served as the main force of the Paradis Island Operation, a critical operation for Marley in which the Founding Titan must be taken from the royal family within the Walls. However, when the plan was deemed a failure after the battle of Shiganshina District, the remaining Warriors served instead as the primary means of land-based assault during the Marley Mid-East War.

Structure
Warriors were selected from a pool of candidates who are also Subjects of Ymir. These candidates could vary in age, ranging from young adults to some as young as twelve years old. New candidates could enter the training program between the ages of five and seven.

Titan Warriors
Out of the many Warrior candidates enlisted by the Marleyan military, only six at a given time were able to inherit the power of the Titans. While these Warrior candidates were not spared from deadly situations in combat or infiltration missions, efforts were taken to ensure that these Warrior candidates were not killed in action if possible. After inheriting a Titan, the Warriors kept their Titans for a 13-year "term" before they were passed down to other candidates chosen for the inheritance. This term limit was not established by choice, but due to the "Curse of Ymir" which ensured that any Subject of Ymir who inherited the power of the Titans would die 13 years after receiving the power.

Those who had inherited the power of the Titans were granted red Eldian armbands as opposed to the yellow bands given to Warrior candidates. Families of these Warriors also received red bands.

Qualities
Having been raised with Marleyan propaganda from a young age, the Warriors followed the orders of their superiors without question. For some, this was done out of blind faith to Marley and an honest belief in the information they had been indoctrinated with. For others, they followed their superiors knowing that disobedience would have resulted in death or worse. Regardless of reasoning, the Warriors abode by their sense of duty to the nation of Marley under all circumstances.

It appears that when outside of Marleyan influence, the Warriors followed a system of "might-makes-right" when settling disagreements. An example of this is during the early stages of the Paradis Island Operation: after Marcel Galliard was eaten by a random Titan, Annie Leonhart voted to return back to Marley while Reiner Braun insisted they continue the mission. This led to a fight that Reiner won, having Annie and their remaining comrade Bertolt Hoover help him continue on with the mission. Another instance of this occurring is the disagreement between Reiner and Bertolt against their superior officer Zeke Yeager; while Reiner and Bertolt wanted to venture back into the Walls in order to rescue Annie (who had been captured), Zeke prioritized obtaining the Founding Titan from Eren Yeager, who would inevitably travel to Shiganshina District in search of the answers within their father's basement. The decision was made only after a brawl between Reiner's Armored Titan and Zeke's Beast Titan in which the latter brutally overpowered the former, receiving little to no injury in the process. With Zeke being the victor, his choice was the decided course of action.

Trivia

 * "Warrior" has occasionally been mistranslated as "soldier" in the official English release. The most notable example of this is in Chapter 31, in which Annie Leonhart's mentioning of being unable to become a "Warrior" is mistranslated as "soldier." However, this is likely due to the fact that the significance of the Warriors was unknown at the time of Volume 8's publication, with the first distinction between "soldier" and "Warrior" not being made until Chapter 39 in Volume 10.

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