Eldia

Erudia (エルディア) is the nation occupied by the Subjects of Ymir (ユミルの民), often referred to as Eldians. The people of Eldia are said to be the only humans capable of turning into Titans, a trait which was despised in them in later history. In ancient history they dominated the world, until a century ago when the Great Titan War isolated many of their people onto the island of Paradis within the Walls where the 145th Fritz king had fled.

History
Around 2,000 years before the battle of Trost District, it is said that the Fritz family came into power as the royal bloodline of humanity. Over a century later, a girl by the name of Ymir Fritz came across the "source of all organic material", gaining the power of the Titans. After 13 years, Ymir Fritz died, and her power was split between nine inheritors, with the chief among them inheriting her role as the Progenitor Titan. With their Titan powers, the nine Titans waged war against Marley, an empire of the early world, and came to rule their continent.

After conquering the Marleyan people, the Subjects of Ymir established a new nation by the name of Eldia. Eventually, the eight Titan clans subservient to the Fritz family began to fight amongst each other, though the power of the Progenitor Titan always maintained order throughout the lands of Eldia.

After 1,700 years, the Progenitor Titan came into the possession of the 145th King of the Fritz family. The King chose to abandon the conflict on the mainland in favor of moving the capital of Eldia to the remote island of Paradis. At this time, the surviving people of Marley rose up against Eldia, beginning the Great Titan War in which Eldia lost its territory on the continental mainland. During this time, the Marleyans managed to steal seven of the nine Titans of Eldia, drastically turning the tide of their conflict. When Paradis had become Eldia's last remaining territory, the King gathered all Eldians he could to the island.

On the island of Paradis, the King used the Progenitor Titan to cause Colossus Titans to form three concentric Walls around their territory: Maria, Rose, and Sheena. Afterwards, the 145th Fritz King, now known as the First Reiss King, used the Progenitor Titan once more to erase the Eldians' memory of the Great Titan War and all of history before the raising of the Walls. For the next century, the Eldians of Paradis lived on in peace, unaware of their past conflicts or their history as the Subjects of Ymir.

The Eldians who did not flee overseas to Paradis were in the end conquered by the Marleyans, but were spared. These Eldians became low-class citizens, forced to reside within designated ghettos separate from the Marleyan population. Marley used their new influence to spread slander of the Eldian Empire, claiming they had resorted to eugenics against the other races of the world for 1,700 years and that Ymir Fritz had gained her power from the "Devil of All Earth". Any Eldians accused of committing wrongdoing against the Marleyans were turned into mindless Titans, doomed to wander the lands of Paradis searching for human food. Some Eldians such as Grisha Yeager, however, met together in secret, plotting to venture to Paradis and retrieve the Progenitor Titan in order to bring back the nation of Eldia.

Ancient Eldia
Very little can be said of the military possessed by the Eldian Empire in the days before the building of the Walls. Evidently, the nine Titans under Eldia's control played a great part in the nation's conquering of the known world centuries ago. These Titans may have served as leaders or commanders for ground infantry in ancient times, as portrayed in the history books in Marley. Furthermore, the Founding Titan was able to command armies of "pure Titans" on the battlefield, with great destructive potential. While nothing is known exactly of the Eldian military at the time of the Great Titan War, it is highly likely that its technology would be comparable or equal to that of the military of the Eldians who would live within the Walls by the end of the war, since technological advancement was suppressed by the Royal Government after the raising of the Walls.

Marley
After the downfall of the Eldian Empire and the rise of Marley on the continental mainland, the Eldians under Marleyan rule ceased to have a standing military, but they did made organized attempts to fight off the new ruler. At some point in Eren Kruger's childhood, an Eldian revolutionary army was raised by the remnants of the Fritz royal family remaining on the mainland. Nevertheless, it was unable to withstand the Marleyan onslaught and was utterly crushed. All its members, including Kruger's parents, were executed by being burnt alive.

By Grisha's days, open rebellion has already been a thing of the past. Militant-minded Eldians largely went underground or chose to continue the fight by infiltrating the rank of Marley's government and military force. Most of the Eldians of Marley, as low-class citizens, would have no possession of serious military power until the time of the warrior program, where Eldian children were given the opportunity to inherit the seven Titans in possession of the Marley government.

Paradis
After the raising of the Walls, the Eldians of Paradis possessed a three-branch military with each branch serving specific functions: the Garrison, which safeguards and reinforces the three Walls; the Survey Corps, who venture beyond the Walls into Titan territory as a means of researching the Titans; and the Military Police Brigade, which exercises control and order over the citizens of the Walls. The latter-most branch is a position of privilege available only to the top ten graduates of each yearly Training Corps.

Politics and Diplomacy
Little can be said of the diplomacy of the Eldian Empire in ancient times, due to slander spread by the Marley government after the Great Titan War. After the Empire's downfall at the hands of Marley, the Eldians of the continental mainland held no political positions of power, with the exception of "the Owl", an Eldian spy within the Marleyan Public Security Authorities.

As King Fritz had wanted, the Eldians of Paradis who lived within the Walls made no interactions with any nation of the outside world, believing themselves to be the last surviving remnants of humanity in a world conquered by the Titans.

Ilse's Notebook
In the year 848, Ilse Langnar of the Survey Corps became the last surviving soldier of the left flank of the 2nd brigade during the 34th Expedition, lost in Titan territory within Wall Maria. With her vertical maneuvering equipment broken and horse missing, she chose to record her experiences as she made her way north toward Wall Rose. During her journey, she is caught by a Titan who forces her back against a tree but refrains from eating her. The Titan speaks to her, first believing her to be "a subject of Ymir" before mistaking her for "Lady Ymir" herself. Ilse attempts to communicate with the Titan while taking notes, asking what it is, where it comes from, and, after losing her composure, furiously asks why they eat humans. The Titan only responds with pained moaning and later starts ripping off its cheeks when Ilse screams at it. When she attempts to flee, the Titan catches her and crushes her head between its jaws, but does not consume her body. Her notebook and remains were discovered a year later by Hange Zoë and Levi Ackerman.

Return to Shiganshina arc
Upon finally reaching the basement in the Yeager family household in Shiganshina, the Survey Corps discovers three of Grisha Yeager's books, describing all his knowledge of the history of Eldia and his own experiences in joining the Eldian resistance in Marley.

Trivia

 * The history of Marleyans and Eldians is comparable with that of the Rwandan populations of Hutu and Tutsi. By 1700, the Rwandan populace coalesced into around eight kingdoms, of which the Tutsi Kingdom of Rwanda became dominant and oppressed the Hutu, fueling a hard relationship between the two races that lasted for centuries. In 1994, during the Rwandan Civil War, the then Hutu majority government perpetrated a which resulted in the extermination of around 70% of the Tutsi population.
 * Rwanda was also a German territory from 1884 until World War I.
 * The technology of the Eldians within the Walls appears to roughly correspond with the technology of pre-Industrial or early Industrial civilization in the Western world.
 * If turned upside-down and mirrored, the territories of ancient Eldia and Paradis are very similar to the real life continental territory of Africa and the island of Madagascar, respectively.
 * This also coincides with the Rwanda parallelism, as Rwanda is a country within the mainland of Africa some distance northwest of Madagascar. When turned upside-down and mirrored, Rwanda is at the southwest, and it is said that Titans primarily target the southern regions of the Walls (although the exact location of Marley within the continent is still unknown).

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