Reiner Braun

Broad shoulders, considerable height, and a habitually serious expression give Reiner a presence that intimidates before he speaks. Hazel eyes sit in a strongly defined face beneath short blond hair. By 854 he has grown taller and leaner, his cheekbones sharpened by lost weight, his hair slightly longer, and a short goatee added.

His Titan rises fifteen meters, sheathed in white plates of hardened skin broken only by exposed muscle at the cheeks, behind the knees and elbows, and at the feet. Organic white lenses cover the eyes, short blond hair tops the head, and the hands and feet can harden into claws that let him scale the Walls themselves.

The quiet, meek boy from Liberio's internment zone clings to a fantasy: become a Warrior, become a hero, and his Marleyan father will come back to the family. Fed on propaganda, he accepts that Paradis holds only devils. After Marcel Galliard dies shielding him, Reiner grafts his dead friend's steadiness onto himself, and by the time he enlists in the 104th Training Corps the borrowed persona is complete, a dutiful, warm-hearted figure whom the other trainees treat as an older brother.

The double life exacts its price. Unable to reconcile his crimes with his affection for the people around him, Reiner buries his true memories and at times genuinely believes he is an Eldian soldier defending the Walls; orchestrating Marco's death appears to be the break point. Bertolt's blunt reminder that they are warriors, not soldiers, is what forces him back into focus. Four years of war leave him haunted by nightmares and so hollowed out that he puts a rifle in his mouth, stopped only by Falco's voice outside the window and his sense of duty to the candidates. Through all of it he remains a genuinely capable leader: composed, analytical, thinking several moves ahead, and willing to die rather than talk when captured.

Born in Liberio to the Eldian Karina Braun and a Marleyan father he is forbidden to know, Reiner enters the Warrior program as its weakest candidate, carried by loyalty alone. Marcel quietly manipulates the army into granting him the Armored Titan over the far stronger Porco, a fact Reiner learns only on the eve of the Paradis mission, shortly after his father screams him out of the kitchen where they meet. When a Titan devours Marcel on the island, Reiner refuses to abort the operation, fights Annie over it, and takes command. He smashes the interior gate of Wall Maria after Bertolt breaks the outer one, and the three survivors melt into the refugee population.

Enlisting in the 104th, Reiner graduates second and becomes a mentor figure to Eren while secretly planning to breach Wall Rose. Marco overhears the truth in Trost, so Reiner strips his gear and lets a Titan take him, then kills that Titan in a fit of transferred guilt. During the 57th expedition he carves Eren's location into the Female Titan's palm while faking his own death. At Utgard he shields Connie with his own body, and days later, nerves gone, he flatly confesses everything to Eren atop Wall Rose. The kidnapping that follows collapses when Eren's Coordinate power turns the Titan horde on him. In the battle for Shiganshina, Reiner survives Levi's blade by shifting his brain functions through his body, only for Thunder Spears to blast him out of his nape; Zeke and Pieck carry him home a ruin.

Four years of war against the Mid-East Alliance follow, ending at Fort Slava where he parachutes into a mid-air transformation. Home in Liberio, he describes the islanders to his family in words too human for Marleyan ears, contemplates suicide, and is led by Falco into a basement where Eren waits. Their conversation ends with Reiner on his knees begging to be killed as Eren transforms above. He saves Falco with a partial transformation and drags Galliard from Eren's jaws despite having no will left to live.

When Marley strikes back at Shiganshina, Reiner duels Eren for the fourth time, decides to let Falco devour him, and instead watches the boy take Galliard. The Rumbling shatters the Walls moments later; he shields Gabi from the debris and collapses into despair. Woken days later by Annie's kick, he joins the alliance of former enemies, confesses his role in Marco's death and absorbs Jean's beating, and fights through the harbor so the flying boat can launch. In the last battle he brawls with the Beast Titan, escapes the jaws of Bertolt's resurrected Colossus, and pins the centipede-like source at Fort Salta with Annie and Pieck until Eren's death ends the power of the Titans. Freed of his armor at last, he embraces his mother, and three years on he sails with the other ambassadors to negotiate peace with Paradis.