Nine Titans

Size varies wildly across the nine. The Cart and Jaw forms stand smallest at 4 and 5 meters, the Colossus dwarfs everything at 60, and the remainder cluster near 15, with the Founding at 13, the Female at 14, and the Beast at 17. Those figures are fixed no matter what the inheritor's Pure Titan looked like: Eren Yeager's 4 meter Pure form reached 15 on gaining the Attack Titan, Armin Arlert's modest form swelled to Colossus scale, and Falco Grice shrank from roughly Armored proportions to 5 meters as the new Jaw. When one person holds several powers, a single form takes precedence; Eren carried the 13 meter Founding alongside the 15 meter Attack and stood at 15.

Aging leaves these forms essentially untouched apart from details such as hair, which changed on Reiner Braun's Armored Titan over the years. Speech follows no rule tied to the powers themselves: Ymir, Zeke, Pieck, and Lara Tybur could all talk while transformed, yet Porco Galliard could not despite holding the same Jaw Titan Ymir once did, and even some Abnormal Pure Titans manage words. Inheritors never copy a predecessor's look, though receiving a power reshapes the form, adding claws and fangs in Ymir's case or enormous bulk in Armin's; Pure Titan bodies also tend to look more emaciated than the same person's form after inheritance.

Each power carries a signature. The Founding Titan rules the rest: its scream converts Subjects of Ymir into Titans, commands existing ones, and rewrites the memories and even the bodies of Ymir's people, though only a holder of royal blood, or one touching a royal-blooded Titan, can unlock any of it. Paths tie it to every Subject of Ymir alive. The form Eren Yeager assumed through it bears the separate name End Titan. The Attack Titan presses ever forward in pursuit of freedom, and its holders receive memories flowing from future inheritors as well as past ones.

The remaining seven split along combat lines. Plate-like hardened skin sheathes the Armored Titan everywhere movement permits, and it can shape claws for scaling structures like the Walls. The Beast Titan borrows animal characteristics that change with each holder. The Cart Titan runs on four legs with stamina enough for months-long transformations and hundreds of shifts in a single day, at speeds rivaling the Jaw. The Colossus Titan vents furnace-grade steam by burning away its own muscle, and its user can dial the transformation blast up to catastrophic scale. The Female Titan absorbs other abilities with unusual ease, hardens its skin, and draws Pure Titans in with a scream. The Jaw Titan, swiftest of the nine, bites and claws through nearly anything. The War Hammer Titan sculpts weapons and structures from hardened flesh and can be piloted from a distance through a cable of Titan tissue while its user shelters inside a crystal casing.

Roughly two millennia before the fall of the Walls, Ymir Fritz became the first Titan, wielding what would later be called the Founding Titan. Her death came thirteen years on, and her father forced her three daughters to consume her remains, dividing the power between them. The fragments eventually settled into nine distinct Titans inherited by her descendants, who crushed ancient Marley, conquered the continent, and raised the Eldian Empire on its ruins. Because family ties strengthen the passage of memories between holders, the powers tended to stay within noble houses, the Founding with the Fritz line and the War Hammer with the Tyburs among them. Those houses feuded endlessly; only the Founding Titan kept the peace.

Karl Fritz, 145th to hold the throne, inherited that peacekeeping power while carrying deep shame over Eldia's history. Conspiring with the Tybur family, he fabricated the legend of the Marleyan hero Helos and engineered the civil war remembered as the Great Titan War. Eldia collapsed from within, and Marley emerged holding seven of the nine, missing only the Founding and the Attack. Six of those went to Eldian Warriors loyal to Marley; the Tyburs kept the War Hammer as reward for siding with Marley first. Karl withdrew to Paradis Island, raised the Walls from thousands of hardened Colossus Titans, and erased the memories of nearly everyone inside, his family continuing under the name Reiss. The count of nine began falling in 845, when Grisha Yeager's Attack Titan devoured Frieda Reiss and absorbed the Founding, leaving eight. Nine years later Eren Yeager consumed Lara Tybur's War Hammer, and seven remained until the Titan powers themselves ended with his death.