Historia Reiss

No soldier in the 104th Training Corps stands shorter than Historia. Blue eyes dominate her heart-shaped face, and her blonde hair falls long past her shoulders. Classmates consider her strikingly cute, and that beauty, joined to her gentle manner, earns her nicknames like angel and goddess; many boys in her class quietly adore her. As a soldier she wears the standard Survey Corps uniform, tying her hair into a low ponytail beneath the green expedition cloak.

Queenship changes her presentation. Her hair goes up into a tidy pleated style parted down the middle at the front, and her everyday dress becomes a pale coat with a matching jacket and trousers over a long-sleeved white shirt, finished with dark boots. For ceremonies she appears in a flowing cloak over a pale off-shoulder gown, with sandals and her crown.

The Krista Lenz persona presents a girl who is timid, sweet, and awkward with people, the product of an isolated childhood. Ymir sees through the sweetness: Historia performs kindness partly to win esteem, to be remembered as a good person by a world that taught her she was a mistake. That hunger turns dangerous, feeding a persistent pull toward self-destruction; she wants a death no one could resent her for. Dragging the wounded Daz through a blizzard is the starkest example, a rescue attempt that would have killed them both had Ymir not stepped in unprompted.

Ymir's departure with Reiner and Bertolt hollows her out. Freed from her assumed name yet stripped of hope, she drifts into blank disinterest, describing Krista as a deeply caring person and her real self as vacant. Eren, oddly, tells her this honest version seems more genuine, and his words stay with her.

The coup forges something sturdier. She defies her father, kills him once he becomes a Titan, and follows Dimo Reeves's suggestion to slug humanity's strongest soldier, punching Levi after her coronation. Genuine warmth survives the change: she frees Eren in the cavern when every argument says to devour him, and as queen she pours her family's assets into a farm sheltering orphans, building a personality that is finally her own.

Historia enters the world as the unacknowledged daughter born to Rod Reiss, whose family secretly holds the true throne of the Walls, and Alma, a servant turned mistress who returns to a Reiss-owned farm in northern Wall Sheena to give birth. Her childhood is a study in rejection: her mother refuses all interaction, children from outside the estate throw rocks at her, and she is forbidden to leave. When she finally works up the nerve to hug Alma, she is slapped away and hears her mother lament lacking the courage to kill her at birth. Her half-sister Frieda visits in secret, teaching her to read and urging her toward kindness, then erasing the memories with the Founding Titan's power after every meeting.

Days after Wall Maria falls, Rod arrives to claim her properly, but First Interior Squad soldiers intercept the family. Kenny Ackerman cuts Alma's throat while the woman disowns her daughter with her dying breath, and Rod bargains for the girl's survival: she will vanish, assume the name Krista Lenz, and enlist as a soldier. In the 104th Training Corps she plays the selfless angel until a blizzard exercise, when Ymir, who already knows her real identity, recognizes her rescue of Daz as a disguised suicide and extracts a promise that she will one day live openly under her true name.

The promise comes due at Utgard Castle. Facing death on the tower, Ymir transforms into a Titan to protect everyone, and Historia answers by speaking her real name aloud. When Reiner and Bertolt abduct Eren and Ymir, she joins the pursuit and swears to stand at Ymir's side whatever happens, but Ymir ultimately leaves with the Warriors, and Historia discards Krista for good.

The Survey Corps then builds its revolution around her blood. Offered up as bait to the Interior Squad, she is reunited with Rod beneath the family chapel, where touching Eren restores her stolen memories of Frieda. Rod presses a syringe on her: become a Titan, devour Eren, and return the Founding Titan to the Reiss line. Remembering Ymir's charge to live with pride, she smashes the syringe, throws her father over her shoulder, and works to free Eren as the cavern comes down. Rod licks the spilled serum and rises as an enormous Titan; Historia insists on joining the battle, helps destroy him at Orvud District, and announces herself to the stunned crowd as the rightful ruler of the Walls. Coronation follows, along with her promised punch to Levi's face.

As queen she runs an orphanage farm and leaves the monarchy largely ceremonial. When Hizuru's proposal requires that the Beast Titan pass to her from the dying Zeke and that she bear as many royal children as possible, she accepts for as long as necessary; when Eren privately reveals his plan to erase the outside world, she protests, then asks him about the possibility of a child. Months afterward she is carrying a child, and she goes into labor as the Rumbling levels the world beyond the sea. In the three years following Eren's death she marries her child's father, shields the relatives of the soldiers who brought him down, and opens peace talks with the surviving nations.