Traute Caven

A slender, athletic frame and a face fixed somewhere between calm and sorrow give Caven a muted presence. Her blonde hair falls slightly past the shoulders, usually drawn back, with bangs split down the center.

Her wardrobe follows her postings. She first appears in standard Military Police dress over a white button-down; after entering the Anti-Personnel Control Squad, her dress changes to the unit's fitted black trousers, white shirt, and black footwear alongside the squad's anti-personnel vertical maneuvering gear.

Caven talks about existence the way other people discuss weather, flatly calling her world and her life meaningless. Very little cracks that surface; she watches Levi Ackerman cut down three of her comrades without visible emotion. By her own telling she drifted through life with no reason to live until Kenny Ackerman supplied one, and from then on his dream became her faith.

That devotion carries a motivating edge. On the eve of her final battle she rallies her subordinates, telling them the time they buy will pay off, and demanding trust in the dream their captain says will turn the world on its head.

In 847, two years after Wall Maria fell, Caven attends Kenny Ackerman's first briefing of his new squad. She catches his interest by shrugging off the idea of a homicidal maniac with no military record commanding them, then questioning whether the whole apparatus of Walls, rules, and army corps was ever anything but pointless once humanity quit fighting the Titans. Kenny answers her honestly: opposing the Survey Corps is merely the cover story that keeps the higher-ups satisfied, and what he actually chases is power in service of a grand dream.

During the Royal Government conflict she accompanies Kenny to collect Eren Yeager and Historia Reiss from Dimo Reeves, frisking both captives and confirming they carried hidden blades. In the ambush on Levi's squad she lands a sneak attack of her own, gunning down Keiji with a shot to the head from her maneuvering gear, and checks on Kenny after Levi slips away and leaves him hurt.

Beneath the Reiss Chapel she readies her troops for the Survey Corps' assault, delivering her bleak sermon about meaning and Kenny's dream. The battle opens badly: Sasha Blouse ignites gas barrels sent tumbling down the stairs, smoke floods the cavern, and signal flares turn the fight chaotic. Caven orders her people to scatter and swarm isolated enemies in groups. She survives a pass from Levi, then baits Hange Zoë by deliberately missing two shots, hooks Hange through the shoulder, and hurls them into a pillar before pulling her surviving forces back to regroup. When Rod Reiss transforms into a Titan, she and her remaining subordinates rush toward Kenny and die under collapsing debris.