Yelena

At 190 centimeters, Yelena stands taller than any other woman in the series, and her lean build lends her an androgynous presence. Blonde hair frames her face in a short bob cut with level bangs, beneath which sit large dark eyes fringed by heavy lashes. During the Raid on Liberio she wears a chinstrap beard that turns out to be a fake. Her Marleyan uniform gives way, once she breaks from that nation, to a white button-down worn under a dark blazer with matching trousers.

Everything about Yelena runs on conviction. Zeke Yeager is, in her eyes, less a commander than a messiah whose plan to sterilize every Subject of Ymir will end the Titan curse and deliver the world from suffering, and she casts herself as his chosen instrument. That devotion shades into derangement: comrades suspected of undermining the cause, or anyone who insults the people it aims to save, may be shot on the spot without a flicker of hesitation. Because she once believed Eren shared his brother's vision, she extended the same awe to him, imagining the two remembered like ancient gods for thousands of years.

Her contempt for Marley, the land of her birth, burns just as hot. She calls it a cruel empire that exports misery, feels nothing for it, and freely insults its soldiers, yet she still wants its people freed from the cycle of violence, which is precisely what she believes euthanasia would accomplish. Watching Zeke shatter a fleet of airships full of her countrymen, she smiles through welling tears, a reaction some read as outright sociopathy. Toward the Subjects of Ymir themselves she carries no personal hatred; they are simply the vector of the Titan powers she wants erased. Even after Eren betrays Zeke and triggers the Rumbling, she keeps insisting the euthanasia plan was the correct answer.

Yelena grows up in an ordinary Marleyan household, sours on her country, and after encountering Zeke Yeager decides to write herself into history by helping him remake the world. She invents a biography in which Marley conquered her homeland and forced her into its army, then gathers like-minded conscripts into the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers. When Marley's war against the Mid-East alliance leaves her unit facing certain death, Zeke's Beast Titan pulls them out, cementing her worship of him.

Eager to lay eyes on Eren, the brother who carries two Titan powers, she ships out in 851 aboard the first survey fleet sent toward Paradis. When Eren's Titan beaches the vessel and Hange Zoë offers talks, Yelena shoots her own captain rather than let him refuse, then negotiates alongside Onyankopon. The Volunteers ally with the island and hand over Marleyan technology. A year on, she helps broker the meeting with the Azumabito family and points out to Mikasa their resemblance to her mother, a blood relation.

At a Trost banquet celebrating the new railway, a guard swap involving Floch Forster lets her slip away for a private audience with Eren. The two agree the military needs to be shoved into action, and she lays out Zeke's plan; Eren feigns sympathy while hiding his own intentions. She also arranges for wine laced with Zeke's spinal fluid to reach senior officers through Niccolo, and later plots with Eren to crush the Global Allied Fleet and Fort Salta with a partial rumbling. During the Raid on Liberio in 854 she dons her false beard, poses as a soldier from the Lakua base, and lures Pieck and Galliard into a pit trap. Aboard the escaping airship, Jean berates her for letting the Jaw and Cart Titans roam free, and she accepts the blame.

Back on Paradis, Dot Pixis has the Volunteers seized despite their gift of stolen Titan serums, a betrayal she shrugs off. Under interrogation she admits meeting Eren but denies pushing Zeke's agenda; Pixis calls her a terrible liar. Once the spinal fluid revelation drives mass defections to the Yeagerists, Pixis must surrender, and Yelena gloats over the reversal while condemning the plot to assassinate Zeke. Visiting the imprisoned Survey Corps veterans, she executes Griez for defiling Sasha Blouse's memory, then preaches the euthanasia plan to the captives. When Marley's forces descend on Shiganshina she begs Eren to retreat underground, mobilizes the Yeagerists in his defense, and exults as Zeke annihilates the airships.

The Rumbling leaves her stunned, unable to grasp why Zeke's Titans run wild, and Floch arrests the Volunteers. Condemned to die for knowing the euthanasia secret, she is snatched from her execution by the Cart Titan along with Onyankopon and Jean. At first she withholds Eren's destination from Magath, prompting Pieck to expose her Marleyan origins, and she nearly fractures the fragile alliance by dredging up its members' crimes against one another, goading Jean into attacking Reiner over Marco Bott's death. Only after Magath breaks her arm under torture does she cooperate. Aboard the Azumabito ship she identifies Fort Salta's flying boat base as Eren's probable target, trading the information for Hange's admission that Zeke's plan had merit. Once the Battle of Heaven and Earth is years in the past, she is seen planting trees among the survivors working to heal the land the Rumbling scarred.