Rita Iglehaut

A messy fringe tops Rita's cropped blonde hair, with a few loose strands gathered by string and beads. The short cut lends her a boyish air. Large blue eyes dominate a face marked by a delicate nose and mouth, and beneath her Garrison uniform she typically wears a white turtleneck along with a modest pendant.

Duty comes first for Rita. When Quinta District loses every higher authority, she assumes complete responsibility for the trapped population, and in desperate moments she stages displays of skill and force so the civilians will accept her command. The district's repeated slides into lawlessness corrode her ideals. Convinced that peace must be preserved at any cost, she embraces a merciless philosophy that extends to torture and public execution.

Rita's birth mother served in the Survey Corps and died beyond the Walls. Unable to bear the loss, her father obtained a drug from Henning Iglehaut and ended his own life, after which the Iglehaut family adopted the orphaned girl. She grew up to enlist in the Garrison.

During the fall of Wall Maria in 845, Rita helps defend the civilians fleeing Quinta toward Wall Rose. When Titans swarm the convoy, she rides back and orders everyone to stay inside the district for their own protection. With the officials and senior officers dead or absent, Quinta names her its interim commander. Alongside her comrade Amanda she settles local disputes and organizes a makeshift police force from the trainees and recruits left behind. Her resolve cracks when she watches her old friend Mathias Kramer accidentally kill a young trainee, and after a thief nearly murders her adoptive mother, she abandons restraint entirely.

Six months on, Rita proclaims Quinta a sovereign territory outside the Royal Government's reach and feeds lawbreakers to a Titan the local Garrison has captured; her adoptive father Henning is among the executed. When Mathias builds a resistance against her rule, she conspires with Gabriele, a government emissary from Wall Rose, to round up its members, and sentences Mathias himself to death. Before the executions begin, Titans that climbed atop Wall Maria start dropping into the city. Rita pardons her prisoners, orders an evacuation under cover of night, and spends two days guiding Quinta's citizens to Wall Rose, sheltering in a Titan Forest by day. She reconciles with Mathias on the road and submits to arrest upon arrival; whatever penalty she faces goes unrecorded.