Keith Shadis

At 198 centimeters, Keith towers over every other human in the series, and his shaved scalp, deeply creased forehead, and shadowed eyes give him an unnerving presence. A small tuft of beard hangs beneath his chin, and the Training Corps instructor's uniform is nearly all he is seen in.

Younger portraits show a different man entirely: neatly combed dark hair over a smooth-shaven, unlined face. Command of the Survey Corps aged him quickly, his hairline retreating while a thin beard crept along the jaw, and his civilian wear ran to a dark jacket, button-up shirt, and dark trousers.

Fascination with what lay beyond the Walls pulls young Keith into the Survey Corps, and Grisha Yeager's lavish praise convinces him he belongs to humanity's chosen few. The belief curdles into arrogance; he treats himself as the smartest man in any room and waves off tactical proposals from subordinates, including the scouting formation Erwin Smith devises. Years of failed expeditions grind the delusion down, and handing a dead soldier's severed arm to the man's grieving mother finally breaks it: special people exist, he concludes, and he was never one of them.

He resigns in Erwin's favor and reinvents himself as the trainees' resident nightmare, all volume and menace, a persona wielded deliberately to break recruits down and harden them. He calls the job penance for every soldier lost under his command; Hange suspects it was really an escape. Beneath the theatrics sits a sharp judge of people, able to read a trainee's character from expression, mannerism, and skill alone.

In the year 832, on an expedition that strangely encountered almost no Titans, Keith finds a man wandering beyond Wall Maria with no equipment and no idea what the Survey Corps is. He brings Grisha Yeager into Shiganshina, and over drinks insists humanity should hunger for the world it has been denied; Grisha's reply, that the Corps demands special people, plants the seed of Keith's self-image. He watches Grisha cure a plague and win the heart of Carla, the barmaid Keith quietly loves, and attends their wedding only to slip out early. After a Titan devours the 11th commander, Keith inherits the Survey Corps, where his refusal to adopt Erwin's long-range scouting formation keeps the casualty lists long. Jeered by crowds after yet another failure, he erupts at Carla, sneering that ordinary people cannot understand him, words he never gets the chance to take back.

The 845 expedition ends with Keith weeping before Moses Braun's mother, conceding that all his missions have produced nothing but corpses, and he names Erwin his successor. Wall Maria falls that same night. Helping Grisha search the refugees, he learns Carla has been eaten, then later finds Eren unconscious in the woods with Grisha vanished, and carries the boy to shelter.

Two years on he runs the 104th Training Corps initiation like a hazing rite, headbutting Jean for wanting the Military Police, terrorizing Sasha over a stolen potato, and privately cataloging each recruit's strengths, from Mikasa's unprecedented talent to Eren's outsized sense of purpose. Recognizing Carla's child among the recruits and dreading the fire in his eyes, he sabotages Eren's maneuvering gear to push him out of the military, then relents when the boy balances on broken equipment through raw will; he has Thomas Wagner trade belts with Eren and concedes that Grisha's son has become a soldier.

Years later, Eren spots Keith in his father's memories, and the veterans pay the instructor a visit. He recounts the whole story, cautioning that none of it will help humanity, and is moved when Eren accepts being ordinary; in answer he passes along Carla's belief that her son never needed to surpass anyone, being special simply because he was born. During the Yeagerist takeover, Keith refuses to surrender the training grounds and lets his own students beat him unconscious to prove their loyalty to Floch, mocking the rebellion's leader all the while. Freed from a cell during Marley's raid on Shiganshina, he saves the 109th trainees from Zeke's Titans and rallies the headquarters' defense. When his former students slip away to stop Eren, Keith follows: he derails the train carrying Yeagerist reinforcements to the port, then volunteers to stay behind with Theo Magath and destroy the cruiser that could pursue the escaping alliance. The two old commanders exchange names, detonate the ship's powder stores, and die together; Keith's soul later stands among the fallen who welcome Hange.