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
Nearly 2,000 years before the battle of Trost District, a girl by the name of Ymir Fritz came across the "source of all organic material", and through it she gained the power of the Titans. Her family, the Fritz family, came to rule over the Eldians as their royal family. After 13 years, Ymir Fritz died, and her power was split between nine inheritors, with the chief among them inheriting her role as the Founding 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 Founding Titan always maintained order throughout the lands of Eldia.

After 1,700 years, the Founding 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 the Eldians he could on the island. On the island of Paradis, the King used the Founding 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 Founding 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 Founding Titan in order to bring back the nation of Eldia.

Ancient Eldia
In the 1,700 years between the death of Ymir Fritz and the start of the Great Titan War, the Eldian Empire was evidently divided into eight houses, each led by an inheritor of the nine Titans which split from Ymir's "soul". These eight houses warred against each other within the Eldian Empire, though conflicts in the Empire were nonetheless maintained with the power of the Founding Titan held by the Fritz family, the royal house. Having essentially conquered the known world, the other nations of the world such as Marley held a hatred against the Subjects of Ymir and wished for their extermination.

Marley
After having lost the Great Titan War, the Eldians descended from those who remained on the continental mainland are regarded as low-class citizens by the nation of Marley, considered "filthy-blooded" and inhuman. Eldians are segregated from the main population into designated ghettos as a potential selection of Titan weapons in the event that the Marley government obtains the Founding Titan. However, many who are aware of this contingency oppose it, believing that it would be better to exterminate the Eldians with or without the Founding Titan in order to rid the world of the Titans altogether.

On occasion, Eldians can be given permission to exit their internment zones with special permits distributed by the Public Security Authorities. Furthermore, all Eldians both within the internment zones and beyond in Marley territory are required to wear special armbands denoting them as Eldian when appearing in public. Most Eldians seem content with this existence, though on numerous occasions resistance forces had been organized in order to restore the Eldian Empire, though all known attempts have failed. Besides resistance movements, other secret Eldian organizations included a cult dedicated to the worship of Ymir Fritz, the matriarch of Eldia and a goddess in the eyes of several of her subjects. The followers of this cult were fanatic in nature to the point of resorting to worshiping a homeless girl by the name of "Ymir", though the leader of said cult seemed to lead the group only for profit. Eventually, the cult was discovered and captured by the Public Security Authorities, in which the cult's leader turned against Ymir without hesitation, and all were exiled to the borderline of Paradis as mindless Titans. However, their devotion to their goddess was strong enough to cause one follower to display great reverence even in Titan form to a soldier who resembled Ymir.

Beside being treated as second-class citizen and cheap labor, many young Eldians who have joined the warrior program are being used as expandable soldiers for Marley's wars. As the result, most these young Eldian are hugely devoted to the cause of Marley, despite the majority of Eldian being oppressed heavily. These warriors also serve as potential candidates for inheriting the powers of the Titans.

Paradis
When the Eldian Empire was isolated to the Walls on the island of Paradis off the east coast of the continental mainland, King Fritz made use of the Founding Titan in order to lead his subjects to believe they were the last remnants of the human race in a world overrun by the Titans. The Fritz monarchy remained as the royal family over Eldia, however for the security of the Founding Titan the royal family went into hiding as the Reiss family while a pretender bloodline was placed upon the throne under the Fritz name. Early on in Eldia's history within the Walls, other races evidently arrived within their new territory such as the Ackerman family and the Asian clan, peoples of non-Eldian descent. Due to the nature of the Founding Titan, these bloodlines interfered with King Fritz's plan for perfect peace. Some of these bloodlines complied with King Fritz's orders to keep silent concerning the history of the world beyond the Walls, becoming the nobility within the interior of Eldia's new territory, however others such as the Ackerman family and Asian clan objected to the King's ideology and rebelled. These bloodlines were subjected to extermination, and those who survived fled into hiding in places such as the Underground beneath Eldia's captial of Mitras or in the isolated wildernesses beyond the towns.

As an additional measure to ensure the Eldians within the Walls would never be able to venture beyond them without authorization, the Royal Government placed firm restrictions on the technological progress that could be achieved by the craftsmen and engineers of Eldia. Those who broke this regulation would be secretly targeted by the First Interior Squad, the elite force within Eldia's Military Police Brigade who received orders directly from the monarch of Eldia. Due to this restriction of progress, Eldia would fall behind technologically with Marley over the decades.

A majority of the Eldians within the Walls are content with their isolated existence under the King's rule. Those who desired to see humanity's territory reclaimed would join the Survey Corps, the military branch authorized to exit the Walls periodically, though many civilians considered the act of leaving the Walls to be a foolish and wasteful gesture.

Titans and the Paths
For reasons unknown, the Subjects of Ymir are the only humans capable of transforming into Titans. Marleyan propaganda has suggested that individuals with mixed Eldian heritage can also transform into Titans, though the truth of this claim is unknown. In ancient times, Eldians turned into Titans were used as unstoppable weapons, though after the Great Titan War all Titans seem to exist only on the island of Paradis, excluding the seven intelligent Titans taken from Marley in the war.

The power of the Titans stems from an abstract phenomena referred to only as "paths invisible to the eyes". Through these unseen paths transcending both time and space, the organic material which makes up the body of a Titan is sent to its user. Since Ymir Fritz was the first of all Titans, it is likely that the paths from which the organic matter originates may be the "source of all organic material" which she found 2,000 years ago.

The paths also act as a fail-safe for the "Curse of Ymir", which prevents holders of Titan power from keeping their power for longer than the 13 years Ymir Fritz held her Titan power. If the holder of an intelligent Titan dies before their Titan can be inherited, the power of that Titan follows the unseen paths and is reborn into an Eldian child, with distance and blood relation playing no factor into which child is born with the power. Furthermore, the paths are capable of sending memories or willpower from one individual to another across time and space, even backwards in time. In this region beyond physical space, all paths linked to the Eldians coordinate at the Founding Titan, the Titan which has full power over the memories and willpower of the Eldians.

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 had 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. These findings were later discussed in a meeting between the surviving members of the Survey Corps as well as the highest military leaders, where the nation of the Walls was acknowledged by its people as Eldia for the first time in over a century.

Trivia

 * The history of Marleyans and Eldians is comparable with that of the populations of  and . 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, the then Hutu majority government perpetrated a  which resulted in the extermination of around 70% of the Tutsi population.
 * Rwanda was also a territory from 1884 until.
 * The technology of the Eldians within the Walls appears to roughly correspond with the technology of pre- 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 and the island of, 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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