Uri Reiss

Frailty defines Uri's physical presence. Slight even by his family's standards and, at 155 centimeters, the shortest grown man in the series, he favors a plain, pale robe over royal finery. Blond hair hangs to his neck in youth and fades to grey as he ages.

His weary grey eyes carry a composure far older than his years, though after the inheritance they periodically go dark and hollow, a sign of the First King's will moving through him.

For a king wielding godlike power, Uri is startlingly humble. He absorbs Kenny Ackerman's rudeness, thrown knife, and drawn pistol without anger, reasoning that the Ackermans earned every ounce of their hatred through what the Reiss monarchy did to them, and he goes as far as kneeling in formal apology. Pain barely registers on him; a blade buried in his arm draws no reaction.

His compassion outlives his ambitions. Though the First King's ideology strips away his old goal of ridding the world of Titans, Uri still hopes to build a paradise for what remains of humanity, convinced the world will collapse before long.

Uri is the reigning king's second son, younger brother to Rod Reiss. Both boys beg their father to turn the Founding Titan's "invincible power" against the Titans, and both are refused without explanation. In 829 Uri volunteers as successor, asking Rod to pray for him, and consumes their father in the family's inheritance ritual. The moment the power settles, Rod can read in his brother's eyes that the First King's will has claimed another host: Uri will neither fight the Titans nor share mankind's stolen memories.

Kenny Ackerman eventually identifies Uri as the true king and comes to kill him. Uri stops the attempt with a partial transformation, catching Kenny in his Titan's fist while his own body remains almost entirely outside it, then spares his attacker over Rod's insistence that the man die. Bowing with the knife still lodged in his arm, he apologizes for his family's purge of the Ackerman line and for his failed dream of paradise. The gesture floors Kenny, who becomes his bodyguard and, in time, his closest confidant; the hunt against the Ackermans ends under Uri's rule. By a lakeside he confides to Kenny that the power will pass to one of Rod's children and that ruin will find the world before long.

In 842 Uri is bound hand and foot in the cavern beneath the Reiss Chapel while his weeping niece Frieda injects herself with Titan serum, the rest of the family looking on. He smiles as her Pure Titan devours his upper body, passing on the crown, the Founder, the memories of the world, and the First King's will. Years later Rod invokes his brother's memory while pressuring Historia to inherit, and a dying Kenny replays his years with Uri, concluding that even his friend lived enslaved, a slave to his own dreams like everyone else.