Floch Forster

Tousled blond hair, kept short, tops Floch's medium-height frame. During the mission to reclaim Shiganshina he wears standard Survey Corps gear and cloak, switching to a white button-down and dark pants when off duty.

His look shifts by 854. Heavier bangs sweep toward the right side of his face while the back stays cropped, and although his height barely changes, he cuts a more seasoned figure in the black uniform and anti-personnel vertical maneuvering equipment the Corps adopts for the raid on Liberio.

By his own confession, Floch starts out a coward. What haunts him at Shiganshina is not dying but dying pointlessly, yet fear never fully rules him: he rides in Erwin Smith's suicide charge regardless, and afterward he risks Mikasa Ackerman's wrath rather than let anyone wrestle the Titan serum away from Levi. Erwin commands his deepest loyalty. Floch argues furiously that only a ruthless commander of Erwin's caliber can deliver victory, and he brands the decision to revive Armin instead as sentiment overruling judgment. In his framing, adults sacrifice what they love for the greater good while children cling to it, and he sorts everyone around him into those two camps.

Honesty is both his virtue and his cruelty. He tells Hitch that Marlowe surely regretted enlisting as he died, informs Armin that much of the military considers his survival a mistake, and insists that future recruits hear the unvarnished truth before signing on, so that cowards like himself know to stay away.

The four years after Shiganshina turn him vindictive. He burns whole city blocks in Liberio without flinching, dismisses collateral damage, and celebrates Eren's willingness to play the devil. As Yeagerist leader he shoots a captive Volunteer mid-conversation, makes recruits prove loyalty by beating their old instructor, and gloats to Kiyomi Azumabito about Hizuru's coming destruction. Beneath the fanaticism sits dread: he believes Eren's death guarantees the slaughter of everyone on Paradis, and he spends his final breath begging his former comrades to let the Rumbling finish.

Floch trains with the 104th Training Corps and serves in the Garrison before post-uprising propaganda draws him into the Survey Corps. Assigned to Squad Klaus for the operation to retake Wall Maria, he guards the horses while the Beast Titan's barrage tears through the recruits, panicking until Levi forces him to cover. Won over by Erwin's last speech, he rides in the charge, is thrown from his horse, and wakes as the only rider left alive. He hauls the dying Erwin to Levi and pins Eren down during the serum dispute; when Armin receives the injection instead, he demands to know why, then spends the aftermath saying every ugly truth aloud, from Marlowe's final regrets to the military's verdict on Armin's survival.

Years later Eren privately reveals his intention to turn the Founding Titan against the world, and Floch begins quietly gathering what becomes the Yeagerist faction. During the raid on Liberio he plants explosives with no regard for civilians, then helps subdue Gabi and Falco after Sasha's shooting aboard the airship. Back on Paradis he leaks news of Eren's detention, is arrested, and walks free thanks to military sympathizers, greeting Eren as the savior of a reborn Eldian Empire. Under his direction the Yeagerists seize Hange at gunpoint, commandeer the Training Corps base, force new recruits to beat Keith Shadis, and march on Levi's detachment holding Zeke; a suspicious Floch nearly checks the ruined Levi for a pulse before Zeke's bizarre reappearance lets Hange escape with the body.

He lives through the Walls' collapse as the Rumbling begins, then consolidates power. He detains the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers, executes one to cow the rest, stages a public execution of Onyankopon and Yelena that the Cart Titan interrupts, and seizes the harbor to control the Azumabito mechanics, killing several Hizuru guards. When the allied force strikes, he directs fire at the flying boat, takes a bullet from Gabi in mid-air, and drops into the sea. Clinging to the departing ship's hull for two days, he crawls into the hangar at Odiha, punctures the flying boat's fuel tank, and dies with Mikasa's anchor through his throat, still pleading that Eren's Rumbling is Paradis' only hope.