Warriors (Anime)

"The Marley government needed Subjects of Ymir to serve as vessels for the Nine Titans and become Marleyan Warriors."

- Grisha Jaeger states Marley's new Warrior program

The Warriors (戦士) or the Warrior Unit, are a special unit of the Marleyan military. Its members are the Subjects of Ymir under Marleyan control who are given the power to transform into one of the Nine Titans. Their primary objective is to seize the Founding Titan, which they call the "Coordinate," and bring it to Marley.

Duty
The Marleyan Warriors are expected to carry out the needs of their superiors without question or objection, sacrificing their whole lives for the nation of Marley if it is needed. Since Marley, after the Great Titan War, focused on using the power of the Titans in order to establish itself as the global superpower, the Warriors have been used extensively in multiple wars of conquest beyond the country's borders. Due to their powers, the Warriors are usually given the most important missions by their Marleyan superiors, attacking ennemy military bases and facilities, and destroying important ennemy cities. Though in recent years, due to the rarity of the Warriors, and the technological advancements made by other major nations in order to counter Marley's Titans, efforts have been taken to ensure that they are not put into dangerous situations which could lead to the loss of one of them. Because of their status as Subjects of Ymir, a race despised by the different peoples of the world, they are considered as "devil-blooded" and "filthy", and them being Warriors is seen as a means to atone for their ancestors' sins and them having filthy blood by remaining completely devoted to the Marleyan state and being ready to do anything for the benefit of the country. Just as in civilian society, the Eldians who are part of the Warrior program are brainwashed into despising their ancestors and themselves for the sole reason of existing, because of the countless atrocities enacted by the Eldian Empire on Marley and the rest of the world for millenia. The Warriors are encourage to be cautious of any one of their comrades demonstrating treachorous behavior and ideologies against Marley.

The Warriors are also brainwashed by Marley in hating their fellow Eldians from Paradis Island, who are considered to be "island devils", being responsible for the terrible daily oppression the mainland Eldians experience in the internment zones, and the theory that they are scheming in order to use the Wall Titans to enact the Rumbling, so that they subjugate the world and repeat the same crimes committed by their ancestors. Thus, the Warriors are told to believe that they are the ones who have the duty to save the world from the "island devils". The Warriors learn many oaths that they need to recite whenever they are asked to by superior officers, consisting in praining the nation of Marley and the priviledge of serving the country, while cursing their own blood and ancestors for being descendants of devils.

In recent years, the Marleyan Warriors with the power of the Titans have 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. This mission began in the year 845 during the fall of Wall Maria and has been ongoing for the past nine years. However, as of the year 854, the operation is officially a complete failure, since the current Founder Eren Jaeger has enacted the Rumbling and ravaged most of the Marleyan mainland.

Marleyan military
The Warrior program is under the authority of high-ranking Marleyan officers. The commanding officer in charge of the supervision and training of the Eldians part of the program after it was instituted was Commander Theo Magath, before he became the military's general after the death of Calvi. Magath was supplanted by many other Marleyan officers from varying ranks who helped him control and train the thousands of Eldians who have been offered by their families to become Warriors. As in civilian society, those Marleyans superiors are extremely harsh on the Eldians, and implemented severe harassment and punishment whenever the candidates or Warrior Titans didn't meet the expected goals, or didn't demonstrate enough devotion for the Marleyan state.

Volunteers
Warriors are selected from a pool of volunteer children who are also Subjects of Ymir. These volunteers are boys and girls in healthy state from 5 to 7 years old. These children are given the same armbands as the one given to the Eldians who are forcefully conscripted into the Marleyan military and sent to foreign battlefields : the grey one, that they wear even outside of training. The first phase of selection is then pursued, with the children enduring harsh training exercices in order to be admitted to the next phase of selection, such as running with heavy equipment and a rifle in the rain, hand-to-hand combat, shooting precision or theoretical evaluations.

Warrior Candidates
The Subjects of Ymir who are accepted into the second phase of selection are then officially considered as Warrior Candidates (戦士候補生 Senshi kōho-sei), and are given a special Eldian armband : the yellow one. Warrior candidates are then selected in order to be given the priviledge to inherit one of Marley's Titans that the country acquired during the Great Titan War. The training is even more intense and selective, because of the very rare number of Titans. As such, there are dozens of candidates fighting for only one place. Due to small numbers of available Titans, the Warrior candidates vary greatly in age : they can go from small prepubescent children to late teenagers or early adults, which was the case for Porco Galliard and Colt Grice.

Titan Warriors
The very few who have the priviledge of being given one of Marley's Titans are then given a special armband and a new status in society : the red armband, indicating that they've officially become Honorary Marleyans (名誉マーレ人 Meiyo māre hito) alongside their immediate family members, the same status as the globally acclaimed Tybur family granting them special priviledges from the other Eldians families in Marley, such as better medical treatment, and more respect from their Marleyan superiors. This status being given to those who receive such priviledge is the biggest reason explaining why so many Eldian families willingly volunteered their own children to undergo such harsh training. Children are indoctrinated into dreaming of obtaining that status to a fanatical degree, aiming to be considered as Honorary Marleyans instead of the hated Eldians.

Headquarters
The Warriors' Headquarters, now destroyed by the Rumbling, was located in Liberio near the city's internment zone, which seemed to be the largest and the most important one in the entire country. A considerable part of the Warriors' training were done in this building, especially theoretical classes where the intelligence of the candidates were put in concurrence. Other training exercices were made at the HQ such as rifle assembling, or hand-to-hand combat in one of the building's courtyard.

Uniforms
As the main force of the Marleyan army (マーレ軍 Māre-gun), the Warriors are mostly used for ground based combat, assisting the country's ground forces in battle. Because of this, they are provided the same uniforms worn by the army, with the special uniforms given for Eldians in order to differentiate them from Marleyan soldiers of other races and ethnicities. Outside of combat, the Warrior candidates are given many uniforms in training. They are usually seen wearing the all-white Eldian version of the Marleyan army uniform without the suspender straps and the black supply packs. The two other known uniforms consist in a white short-sleeve military shirt, alongside a green short going up to the knees with brown small leather boots, while the other one consists in a full kaki uniform with high black military boots.

Obviously, as in civilian society, the Warriors wear their armbands at all times whenever they are not inside their households. Under special circumstances, they are allowed to take off their armbands if given permission by a Marleyan superior.

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

It appears that when outside of Marleyan influence, the Warriors follow 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 Bertholdt Hoover help him continue on with the mission. Another instance of this occurring is the disagreement between Reiner Braun and Bertholdt Hoover against Zeke Jaeger over the fate of their fellow Warrior Annie Leonhart. While Reiner and Bertholdt wanted to venture back into the Walls in order to rescue Annie, Zeke prioritized obtaining the Founding Titan from Eren Jaeger, 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.

The Warriors had been extremely secretive due to the nature of their mission. For five years, the identities of the Warriors who began the attack on humanity remained unknown until Annie Leonhart was the first to be caught. The remaining two Warriors, Reiner Braun and Bertholdt Hoover, were only discovered to be enemies of the Eldians of Paradis after a link was discovered between them and Annie. Despite apparent friendships formed with their comrades, the Warriors continued to follow their true mission without question.

History
In the early 830s, the Marleyan government announced the Warrior program to the Eldian populations of the country, in order to train Subjects of Ymir from their early ages so that they could inherit the different Titans owned by Marley in order to infiltrate Paradis Island in the near future, with the objective of obtaining the Founding Titan, resulting in Marley conquering the entire island and acquire its natural ressources, thus consolidating the country's status as the undisputed global superpower. Grisha Jaeger and Dina Fritz, then members of Liberio's Eldian Restorationists, a group desiring to overthrow Marley and bring Eldia back to power, decided send their son Zeke, who has royal blood from his mother's side, to become one of the Marleyan Warriors, with the objective for him to prevent the Founding Titan from falling Marley's hands. Zeke then became a Warrior candidate, but had many difficulties in training, leading to him being emotionnally distraught by the pressure exerced from his father and the constant harsh critics from his Marleyan instructor Theo Magath. Seeing his difficulties in training, the Beast Titan at the time, Tom Xaver, felt bad for him and decided to bond with him, developping a parent-son relationship with Zeke which would last for many years. One day, while cleaning the Warriors’ HQ corridors after multiple failures in training, Zeke overheard Marleyan Public Security officers mentioning his parents’ underground rebel group, gathering information and claiming to be close to have enough intel to arrest them all. Tom Xaver convinced him to snitch out his parents to Marley in order to save himself and his grandparents, which Zeke eventually did. With this, Zeke totally gained his Marleyan superiors’ trust and managed to rise through the ranks in the Warrior program, becoming the next in line to inherit Tom Xaver’s Titan. Many years later during his teenage years, after learning about Xavers’ true reasons for having decided to become a Marleyan Warrior, Zeke decided that he would use his powers to erase the Titans from the world by making Subjects of Ymir unable to have children. Xaver kept this a secret and gave him his powers in 842, wishing that Zeke would one day be able to make his plan come into fruition. In 844, a group of younger Warrior candidates inherited the five other Titans under Marleyan control : Reiner Braun, Annie Leonhart, Marcel Galliard, Pieck Finger, and Bertholdt Hoover. The Marleyan military made them test their newly gained powers in a war against a southern enemy nation, which was totally effective. The same year, Zeke used his unique powers discovered by the Marleyans after he inherited his Beast Titan, not knowing that it was due to the royal blood flowing within him, to transform hundreds of Eldians who have been administrated his spinal fluid and were smuggled inside an enemy nation's capital city. The Marleyan military decided to give the keys to the Paradis Island Operation to Marcel, Reiner, Annie and Bertholdt while Zeke and Pieck remained on the mainland in order to deter other enemy nations from attacking Marley. In the year 845, the Warriors were sent to Paradis Island. The very first day, Marcel Galliard got eaten by a Titan sleeping underground, but the three remaining Warriors decided to continue on with the mission.

Marley arc
After the failure of the Paradis Island Operation, the mission was postponed due to multiple nations declaring war upon Marley after allying to form the Mid-East Alliance, resulting from the loss of the Female and Colossal Titans being made public. Because of the nature of the conflict, which was mostly fought on the seas, Marley’s Titans and Warriors didn’t have much opportunity to use their powers to the fullest of their capabilities. The situation changed during the final battle of the conflict, at Fort Slava, where the Warriors managed to help Marley win the war. After the Warrior candidate to inherit the Armored Titan Gabi Braun single handed my destroyed an anti-Titan tank guarding the fort, Pieck and Porco were able to kill many Mid-East soldiers in the trenches and bunkers outside the fort, alongside the help of soldiers from the Eldian Unit. With that, the Airborne Unit is able to bomb the fort by air with the transformed Eldian prisonners inside the airship, with Reiner managing to destroy the remaining anti-Titan cannons atop Fort Slava’s walls with the help of Porco. Then, Zeke used anti-Titan artillery shells stored inside some of the buildings in the fort to crush the Mid-East navy stationed in the harbor beneath the fort, destroying the enemy’s last defenses, thus ending the conflict once and for all. Before succeeding, the fleet managed to fire many shells towards the Beast, but he is saved in-extremis by Reiner who takes all the damage for himself. In the following days, the Warriors would stay in the port city close to the fort alongside the rest of the Marleyan military, in order to rest after the intense battle. Zeke and Colt take part to a military meeting composed of some of the Marleyan military’s highest ranking officers, including general Calvi, in which Zeke would convince the general to resume the Paradis Island Operation. The Warriors are then brought back to their hometown of Liberio, but quickly resume training for the candidates, and military meetings for the Warrior Titans, in order to prepare for the upcoming operations on Paradis Island. A month after the end of the conflict with the Mid-East, a festival is organized in Liberio’s internment zone, culminating in a speech from Willy Tybur, the family’s leader, where he convinced the world’s ambassadors invited to the city to help assisting Marley in the extermination of the Eldians of Paradis Island because of the threat of the Rumbling. At the end of his speech, Eren Jaeger attacked by eating Willy Tybur and slaughtering the gathered Marleyan military officers, and a large battle then ensues. This battle proves to be a calamity for the Warriors and Marley, losing the Beast and War Hammer Titans to the Eldians of Paradis, alongside the country’s primary naval port and fleet. The Cart Titan loses her entire Panzer Unit, while the Armored and Jaw Titans are defeated by Eren’s Attack Titan, with the latter escaping nearly being eaten and his Jaw powers acquired by Eren thanks to Reiner sacrificing himself to save Porco. Warrior candidates Gabi Braun and Falco Grice manage to get inside the airships used by the retreating Eldians and are apprehended after Gabi killed one of their soldiers.

War for Paradis arc
In the following days of the battle, the remaining Warriors are gathered by Magath. The new general after the death of Calvi announces to Reiner, Pieck, Porco and Colt that Zeke was a traitor who worked with the forces from Paradis, and faked his death in order to escape with them from the mainland, and that the attack convinced the world’s nations to join hands with Marley against the Eldians of Paradis Island, preparing for a large scale attack due in six months. The Warriors aren’t on board with the plan, with Colt wanting to save Gabi and Falco from the island as soon as possible, and Pieck telling to Magath that losing the two candidates would be a huge blow to Marley considering the amount of time needed to train new effective Warrior candidates, while Reiner suggests for Marley to launch a surprise attack without waiting for the Global Alliance in order to counter whatever plan Eren and Zeke are preparing. A month afterwards, Pieck and Porco go ahead of Marleyan forces by infiltrating the island and joining the Jaegerist ranks, managing to attack Eren in Shiganshina, forcing him to transform, giving signal for Marley to launch its surprise attack on Paradis Island. An intense battle then ensues in Shiganshina, with the Warriors facing both Eren and his powers, and the Eldian soldiers present in the city. It culminates with Eren enacting the Rumbling after coming into contact with Zeke, while Falco inherits Porco’s Titan by eating him after having been transformed as a Titan next to his brother Colt, who got killed because of the transformation, due to having injected Zeke’s spinal fluid unwillingly a couple hours prior. Due to Eren undoing all hardening on Paradis Island by enacting the Rumbling, Annie is freed from her crystal in the city of Stohess. She is then helped by former Military Police roomate Hitch Dreyse to escape the city and go southwards. After meeting with Armin, Connie and Falco, she decides to go with them and reunite with the other soldiers who have rallied to oppose the Rumbling. After the Warriors’ defeat, they officially form an alliance with renegade members of the Scouts, now under the control of the pro-Rumbling Jaegerists, in order to stop Eren from slaughtering humanity beyond Paradis Island.

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