Coup d'état

The coup d'état of 850, also recorded as the Royal Government overthrow, is the uprising that topples the monarchy inside Wall Sheena. It grows out of the crown's escalating campaign against the Survey Corps, which faces dissolution while government agents hunt Eren Yeager for his Titan power and Historia Reiss for her bloodline. After a summons to the chancellery, Commander Erwin Smith concludes the officials care only for their estates and their positions, and he resolves to replace the regime without marching an army on the capital and without killing, by forcing the rulers to reveal what they actually value.

Victory dismantles the old order wholesale. The First Interior Squad is disbanded, the Anti-Personnel Control Squad wiped out, the Survey Corps spared, and the Reiss family, the genuine royal line, returned to public prominence with Historia taking the throne. The buried truth of the First King and his Walls comes to light, and the crown's long suppression of technology ends.

The first thread unravels with Minister Nick's murder. Hange Zoë notices the victim's torn-out fingernails and traces the killers to the First Interior Squad, proof that the crown silences anyone brushing against the Walls' secrets. Levi Ackerman's squad baits a kidnapping attempt with Jean Kirstein and Armin Arlert disguised as the real targets, then flips the coerced merchant Dimo Reeves into an ally. Reeves lures the torturers Djel Sannes and Ralph into captivity, and a staged betrayal breaks Sannes into confessing that the Reiss family holds the true claim to the throne.

Erwin carries the plan to Dot Pixis, arguing from his father's forbidden theory of tampered memories and from the regime's obsession with Eren's power that the government must be tested. The crown strikes first. Kenny Ackerman's Anti-Personnel Control Squad murders Reeves, ambushes Levi's people in Stohess at the cost of Nifa, Keiji, and Abel, and spirits Eren and Historia away, while propaganda brands the Survey Corps traitors and Erwin is hauled toward the gallows. The tide turns in Trost when Hange rescues Flegel Reeves and maneuvers an Interior officer into confessing his crimes within earshot of hidden townspeople, persuading the Berg Newspapers to print the truth at last.

At Erwin's audience before the king, a false report that Wall Rose has fallen strips the government bare: the officials order the gates sealed against their own refugees. Nile Dok refuses the command, Darius Zackly arrests the leadership, and rule passes from the figurehead Fritz to the military. One threat remains. Rod Reiss, holding Eren and Historia in the cavern beneath the Reiss chapel, tries to have his daughter devour Eren and reclaim the Founding Titan; when Historia smashes the syringe instead, Rod laps up the spilled serum and becomes a crawling monster twice the Colossus Titan's size. At Orvud District the Survey Corps detonates a net of gunpowder barrels in its mouth, and Historia herself opens the nape, proclaiming her name to the crowd as the Walls' rightful ruler.

Her coronation follows, with practical power resting in military hands. The new order taxes uncooperative nobles into isolation, revives suppressed research that produces the Thunder Spears, spreads the glowing stones of the Reiss cavern as lamplight, and turns Eren's new hardening ability into the Executioner from Hell and a permanent seal for Shiganshina's breach. Popular acclaim floods the Survey Corps with recruits, and three months after Trost the Corps rides for Wall Maria.

Erwin Smith designs the coup and wagers his neck on it, naming Hange Zoë his successor when arrest becomes unavoidable. Dot Pixis supplies the decisive gamble of the false breach, Darius Zackly commands the arrests, and Nile Dok's refusal at the critical moment swings the Military Police. Levi Ackerman leads the squad guarding Eren and Historia through every ambush, fighting alongside Mikasa Ackerman, Jean Kirstein, Armin Arlert, Sasha Blouse, and Connie Springer, while the Military Police defectors Marlowe Freudenberg and Hitch Dreyse pinpoint the enemy compound. Marlowe later joins the Survey Corps outright.

Across the lines stand Kenny Ackerman and his Anti-Personnel Control Squad, the interrogator Djel Sannes, and Rod Reiss, the shadow ruler willing to spend his last daughter to regain the Founding Titan. The uprising's dead include the merchant Dimo Reeves, the soldiers Nifa, Keiji, and Abel, and also Duran and Traute Caven; Rod falls to Historia's blades at Orvud, and a dying Kenny passes the stolen Titan injection to Levi.