Warrior Unit

The Warrior Unit (Senshi-tai) is a special subdivision of the Marleyan military built from Subjects of Ymir who receive the power of the Nine Titans. Marley controls seven of those Titans after the Great Titan War, and the unit exists to weaponize them: as the backbone of ground-based warfare, and as the spearhead of the Paradis Island Operation, the mission to wrest the Founding Titan from the royal family within the Walls.

Recruitment preys on Eldia's stigma. Taught from birth that their race carries the guilt for history's atrocities, Eldian families hand over children aged five to seven in hopes of winning honorary Marleyan citizenship, an escape from life inside internment zones like Liberio.

Candidates who survive selection become official Warrior candidates, marked by yellow armbands, and compete for the rare privilege of inheriting a Titan; the six inheritors serving at any one time wear red armbands, as do their families. Each holds the power for a fixed thirteen years, a limit set not by policy but by the Curse of Ymir, which claims every inheritor's life thirteen years after the transfer. Commander Theo Magath supervises the program with the harshness Marley reserves for Eldians, and the Warriors obey without protest, whether from indoctrinated conviction or from knowing what refusal would cost. Left to themselves, they settle disputes by force: Reiner Braun beats Annie Leonhart into pressing on with the Paradis mission after Marcel Galliard is devoured, and Zeke Yeager's Beast Titan later thrashes Reiner's Armored Titan to decide that capturing the Founding Titan outranks rescuing the captured Annie. Secrecy is equally absolute; for five years nobody inside the Walls learns who launched the attack on humanity, and even apparent friendships never divert the Warriors from their mission.

The program opens in the early 830s as Marley turns toward Paradis and its natural resources. Grisha Yeager and Dina Fritz plant their son Zeke inside it, hoping his hidden royal blood will keep the Founder from Marleyan hands, but Zeke struggles in training, bonds with the Beast Titan's holder Tom Ksaver, and on Ksaver's advice betrays his parents to save himself and his grandparents. The betrayal wins him his superiors' total trust, and he inherits Ksaver's Titan in 842, privately resolving to end the Titans by rendering the Subjects of Ymir unable to bear children. In 844 a younger generation, Reiner, Annie, Bertolt Hoover, Marcel, and Pieck Finger, inherits the remaining five Titans and proves them in war, while Zeke's spinal fluid transforms hundreds of smuggled Eldians inside an enemy capital. In 845 four Warriors land on Paradis; Marcel is eaten on the first day, costing Marley the Jaw Titan, yet the mission continues.

Zeke Yeager captains the unit under Commander Theo Magath, with Reiner Braun serving as vice captain. Annie Leonhart, Bertolt Hoover, the brothers Marcel and Porco Galliard, Pieck Finger, and Falco Grice all bear Titans at various points, as does the researcher Tom Ksaver before Zeke. Gabi Braun, Colt Grice, Udo, and Zofia train as candidates. The unit carries Marley to victory at Fort Slava in the Mid-East War, is gutted during the raid on Liberio, where the Beast and War Hammer Titans are lost to Paradis, and fractures in the war that follows; after Eren Yeager triggers the Rumbling, the surviving Warriors join forces with defectors from the Survey Corps to stop him.