Eldian Restorationists

Members of this radical circle refused Marley's version of history outright, treating its teachings as fabrication. Their goal was nothing less than seizing the Founding Titan and returning Eldia to the rank of world power. Each member cut a cross-shaped scar into their own body as the group's mark. Resources flowed to them from a shadowy benefactor called the Owl, an informant planted inside Marley's government who supplied money, weapons, and old documents. Though written in a script none of them could read, the papers' illustrations convinced the group that Ymir Fritz had turned the power of the Titans toward cultivation, road building, and prosperity rather than conquest.

An earlier revolutionary army raised by royal family remnants in Marley preceded them; the Public Security Authorities rooted it out completely and executed its members, Eren Kruger's father among them.

Grisha Yeager entered the movement at eighteen, recruited by Grice after learning that a Marleyan official had killed his sister Faye. The cell operated behind the front of a social dancing club, where Grisha threw himself into deciphering the ancient texts and rose to second in command under Kruger's remote leadership. He married Dina Fritz, a member whose royal bloodline had remained on the mainland, and when Marley announced its Warrior program the couple placed their son Zeke in it as a planted defector. The plan destroyed them: at seven years old, sensing the authorities closing in, Zeke turned his parents in, shielding himself and his grandparents.

The arrested Restorationists were tortured, shipped to Paradis Island, and injected to wander as mindless Titans. Only two escaped that fate. Grice was thrown from the wall to be devoured, while Kruger kept Grisha alive for questioning, then unmasked himself as the Owl, cutting down Gross and transforming to slaughter the other officers. Kruger passed Grisha his mission and his Titan, charging him to enter the Walls and recover the Founding Titan; a photograph of Grisha's family rekindled the broken man's resolve.

Eren Kruger, the Owl, directed the movement from inside Marley's security apparatus, with Grisha Yeager as his second. Dina Fritz carried the royal blood the group prized, and Grice brought Grisha into the fold; all of them died, as did the member remembered only as the Peering Titan.

Decades later, Zeke Yeager described himself to Kiyomi Azumabito as a lifelong Restorationist at heart, expressing regret for the Eldians he had killed while calling his parents' ideals naive. He offered Hizuru the island's resources in exchange for support. In reality his agenda inverted everything the movement stood for: rather than restore Eldia, he intended to use the Founding Titan to strip the Subjects of Ymir of the ability to bear children.