Ymir Fritz (Anime)

"You're not a slave. You're not a god. You're just a person. You don't have to serve anyone. You can decide."

- Eren Jaeger urges Ymir to be free

Ymir Fritz (ユミル・フリッツ) was the progenitor of the Eldians. When she was a young girl, she awakened the power of the Titans and became the first Titan, the Founding Titan. After she died, her spirit was split into the Nine Titans.

Human form
Ymir Fritz was small in stature with blonde hair. She had straight cut bangs with shoulder-length hair that later grew down to her shoulder blades with age. As a slave, she wore tattered clothing with a cloth headband, sash belt, and leather sandals laced above her ankles. After entering the favor of Fritz in adolescence and adulthood, Ymir wore a sleeveless dress with thin decorative bands around each arm. Like all slaves of the Eldian tribe, her tongue was cut out when she was captured, though it may have regenerated after acquiring the power of the Titans.

In posthumous illustrations, Ymir Fritz had long, thick, blonde hair and was often shown holding an apple. She was usually depicted in wearing a flowing dress with loose bell sleeves and a tie around the waist, along with a pair of basic flat shoes.

Titan form
Ymir Fritz's Titan form was enormous in size with blonde hair, a typically female figure, and long, protruding ribs. Her Titan's face possessed no apparent skin, musculature or eyes, leaving only a visible skull.

In posthumous illustrations, Ymir's Titan form is highly romanticized with more human features.

Personality
Being a subject of ancient history, little is known about who Ymir truly was as a person. When reading about her story to Historia, Frieda describes her as a kind girl who is always thinking of others, as well as lady-like. Additionally, Eldians such as Grisha Jaeger speak of Ymir with great reverence, praising her accomplishments for their people. On the other hand, the Marleyan propaganda maintains that Ymir was a pawn of the Devil, whom she had made a deal with and caused her and all her subjects to be despised by much of the world.

In reality, she was a slave with no will of her own. She submitted to Fritz in life, building him his empire, brutally destroying his enemies, and bearing his children as he commanded. Ymir even went so far as to sacrifice her own life for his. Even in death, her soul remained blindly obedient to the Eldian royal family, creating Titans by hand for about 2,000 years in the unknown land surrounding the Coordinate.

History
Around 2,000 years ago, Ymir's village was attacked and enslaved by the Eldians, who also murdered her parents and cut out the tongues of the survivors.

One night a pig escaped from its pen and Ymir was blamed for it. As punishment, Fritz the tribe's leader released her into the wild in order for his men to hunt her for sport.

Wounded and desperate, Ymir found an unusually large tree with a chasm at its base. Seeking shelter, she stepped inside and, not knowing of the sinkhole beneath, fell down into a pool of water. There, a mysterious spine-like creature fused with her and turned her into the first Titan.

With her newfound power, Ymir returned to serve Fritz and used her Titan to cultivate the land, build bridges, and amass wealth for the Eldians. Under his command, she also vanquished the armies of Eldia's rival, Marley. To "reward" Ymir for her service, Fritz took her as his concubine and together, they had three children: Maria, Rose, and Sina.

Thirteen years after acquiring the power of the Titans, Ymir died while thwarting an assassination attempt on Fritz, but then found herself in a mysterious, barren land. King Fritz then forced his daughters to eat their mother's corpse in an attempt to preserve the power of the Titans. He commanded his daughters to continuously reproduce, to have their children eat their spines upon their deaths and perpetuate this ritual from child to child so that Ymir's blood would not die out and Eldia could rule forever with its Titans.

Ymir's power was divided into the Nine Titans; and she continued to serve her descendants, building them Titans whenever they invoked the Power of the Titans.

Mythology
The Eldians hail Ymir as a god-given miracle. Many would claim that as the Founding Titan, she used her Titan power to cultivate barren lands, build roads across the lands, and raise bridges through the mountains of the world, though these claims could never be supported. On the other hand, after the fall of the Eldian Empire in the Great Titan War, the new Marley government would spread slanderous legends that Ymir's power was derived from the "Devil of All Earth."

In her childhood, Historia used to read about the story of Ymir with Frieda; however, in this story Ymir is named "Christa." When Historia asked Frieda what is it like to be "ladylike," Frieda replied to be like "Christa" from the story.

Return to Shiganshina arc
Some years later, when the Scout Regiment discovers Grisha Jaeger's basement, they find three journals. Within Grisha's writings, he recounts his childhood when he was told the story of Ymir and her people by his father. Grisha writes of joining the Restorationists in the nation of Marley several years afterward, learning of the supposed great accomplishments achieved in Ymir's time. Together with the resistance, Grisha declares that they must venture to Paradis Island, where Ymir's descendants had fled eighty years ago, in order to retrieve the Founding Titan and bring back the nation of Eldia.

War for Paradis arc
While on the verge of death after using a Thunder Spear on himself that Levi Ackermann placed on him, Zeke Jaeger would awaken in an unknown land to discover Ymir resculpting his damaged body with earth. Shortly after, he is found by Jaegerists led by Floch; he states that he was in the Paths.

During the assault on Shiganshina, Zeke and his younger half-brother Eren Jaeger are able to make contact with each other and activate the Founder before awakening in the Paths. As Ymir approaches, Eren notices her presence. Zeke explains that she is in fact the Founder herself. He then asks Eren to go ahead with the euthanasia plan. Eren refuses and demands that Ymir lend him her strength, but his pleas are ignored. Zeke subsequently reveals he has nullified the vow to renounce war through Ymir, who obeys only the royal family, her descendants. Under Zeke's order, Ymir promptly restrains Eren with chains.

After Zeke shows Eren the memories of their father Grisha, Zeke realizes that Eren was responsible for Grisha's actions against the Reiss family and that his ultimate goal is inevitable. In a panic, Zeke orders Ymir to sterilize the Subjects of Ymir; and Ymir approaches the Coordinate of converging paths to fulfill Zeke's will.

Eren manages to break free from his chains and reach Ymir before Zeke. Realizing that Ymir has a will of her own, Eren embraces her and asks her to help him rather than try to order her. As Zeke desperately tries to stop them, Eren asks Ymir if she was the one who led him to the Coordinate, musing that she has been waiting 2000 years for someone to arrive. Ymir begins crying.

Back in Shiganshina, Eren's head is reconnected to his body. As everyone looks on in shock, the Wall crumbles, releasing a horde of Colossal Titans as Eren forms a new Titan body, one that towers over even the Wall Titans.

A while later, as Eren leads the Titans in the Rumbling, an apparition of Ymir is seen by a boy in the moment he is crushed to death under a Titan's foot.

As Eren converses with his friends in the Paths, Ymir emerges next to Eren in the Coordinate, symbolizing their cooperation.

As the Warrior unit along with members of Survey Corps engage numerous Titans on top the Founding Titan in an attempt to reach Eren at Fort Salta, Ymir appears and is briefly seen by Armin Arlert who speculates she is the one summoning the previous incarnations of the Nine Titans.

After Mikasa Ackermann kills Eren, Ymir appears behind her, smiling as she watches Mikasa kiss Eren farewell.

Immediately afterwards, Ymir relinquishes the Power of the Titans from the world. Watching Mikasa kill the one she loves was enough to release Ymir from the love she had for Fritz who only wanted to exploit her power.

As Mikasa departs from the battlefield, Ymir appears to her. Mikasa understands that Ymir's love for Fritz was a nightmare that she cannot undo, she instead thanks Ymir for bringing the life into the world which allowed for her to be born. Ymir then envisions a different outcome where she lets King Fritz get impaled by the spear, consoling her three daughters.

Power of the Titans
Ymir was the very first Titan and the only one to ever possess the complete power of the Titans; all who came after her merely possessed fragments of her power. Her Titan body was immense, even by Titan standards, and easily towered above the treeline. Using her immense strength, she effortlessly wiped out Marley's forces. She was also very skilled at controlling her Titan, as she performed complex tasks such as building bridges across mountains and cultivating the fields.

It was said that nobody could surpass Ymir and that because Ymir died 13 years after awakening her powers, no one was allowed to live beyond that; this phenomenon was known as the "Curse of Ymir."

After Ymir's death, her spirit lived on in a world where the Coordinate resides. She was responsible for all Titan transformations throughout history: whenever the power of the Titans was invoked, she built the Titan bodies out of the otherworldly sand. She was also responsible for regeneration and re-sculpted Zeke's body after he was blown up. It reportedly took Ymir a very long time to create these bodies: Zeke said it took her "years" to build him a single human body, but because the world in which she lived transcends time, the process was almost an instant in the physical world. According to Zeke, Ymir could create anything, even chains that represent the "vow of renouncing war."

Ymir was also the source of the Founding Titan's power. From controlling other Titans to creating the Wall Titans to altering the bodies of the Subjects of Ymir, all of the Founding Titan's feats were done by Ymir after she was given the order, either by a scream or in person through the world where Ymir resided. However, because Ymir was Fritz's slave, she only listened to the commands of the royal family; thus, only the royal family could use the Founder's power.

Eren Jaeger became the exception to this, as he invoked the Founder on two occasions. The first was when he punched Dina Fritz's Pure Titan and commanded Ymir to make the surrounding Titans attack Dina; and after she was killed, he turned them against Reiner Braun. The second was when Eren convinced Ymir that she has a will of her own, freeing her from the royal family's control, and she lent her power to Eren instead of Zeke.

Trivia

 * Ymir/"Christa" is on the cover of the book Historia Reiss used to read when she was a child.
 * Ymir can be seen at the beginning of Season 2's Ending Theme, Yuugure no Tori, and briefly in Season 3's second Opening Theme, Shoukei to Shikabane no Michi.
 * Ymir, Abel Reiss and Fay Jaeger share the same Japanese voice actress.
 * Ymir and Louise share the same English voice actress.

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