Attack on Titan: What Is the Connection Between Historia and Ymir Fritz?

Attack on Titan is undoubtedly one of the most popular contemporary manga and anime series. Hajime Isayama’s series focused on the fight between humans, and the monstrous Titans have become a true modern classic with a large fandom from all over the world. And while Attack on Titan raises many interesting questions, it also introduces us to some amazing characters. Ymir Fritz and Historia Reiss are among the most important female characters in the series. Since they are quite closely related, we will explain the connection between Queen Historia Reiss and Ymir Fritz in this article.

Historia Reiss is actually a descendant of Ymir Fritz, who lived roughly 2,000 years before Historia. They are part of the same family, the royal family of Eldia, who were initially named Fritz. Still, after losing to Marley in the Great Titan War and moving to Paradis Island, the family renounced their original name and became the Reiss family. So, as the mother of King Fritz’s children, Ymir Fritz is an old ancestor of Historia Reiss.

The rest of this article will tell you about Ymir Fritz and her connection to Historia Reiss, the current ruler of Paradis Island. We will give you all the necessary story-related details, which also means that this article will contain spoilers, so we simply wanted to warn you about approaching the content if you’re not fully up-to-date with the happenings in Attack on Titan.

What is the connection between the Fritz and Reiss families in Attack on Titan?

The history of the Reiss family traces its origins to the Fritz family, which has existed for over 1,800 years. It all begins when a slave girl from the Eldia tribe, Ymir, comes into contact with the “source of all living matter,” which leads her to obtain the Power of the Titans, becoming the first recorded titan in history. After acquiring her powers, Fritz, the leader of the Eldian tribe, forced her to use her power to destroy enemy peoples and nations, among which was the powerful nation of Marley. After a while, he also made her his concubine, thus begetting three daughters, the first of the so-called people of Ymir.

After protecting Fritz from a failed assassination attempt, Ymir Fritz died thirteen years after gaining her powers. King Fritz passed the power of Ymir to her daughters after forcing them to eat her corpse. They would later pass their powers to their descendants, ending the power in possession of nine successors, emerging the well-known Nine Titans, among which was the most powerful of all, the Founding Titan, which would be inherited only within the main branch of the family. Royal Fritz would use this power to rule over the other eight Titan heir families. These nine successors made Eldia a true empire, conquering towns and eliminating other human races.

Since then, the Eldians have dedicated themselves to this work for centuries. For generations, Fritz succeeded the power of the Founder to his descendants. The other eight Eldian clans inherited by the remaining Titans spent generations fighting among themselves. It was the duty of the Fritz family to maintain the balance between these clans and in Eldia, using the abilities of the Founding Titan.

However, at the time when Karl Fritz becomes the 145th King of Eldia, inheriting the Founding Titan, he, afflicted by the crimes against humanity committed by his ancestors, and to sacrifice his empire for the good of the world, he renounced his duty to maintain the balance in it and moved the capital of Eldia to Paradis Island, taking with him as many subjects as possible, abandoning the rest of the clans on the mainland, and beginning thus to the civil war known as the Great War of the Titans.

On the island, Karl Fritz, with the power of the Founding Titan, built three large walls to enclose his people, where he could create a temporary paradise. To achieve this temporary peace in his new kingdom, Karl threatened to crush the world with his numerous Titans that lay within the walls should they interfere with his designs, even though they were not his real intention to do so. The king, with his powers, erased all the memories that the Eldians who followed him had of the outside world to prevent any attempt at rebellion against his ideology.

Despite this, among those who followed the king to the island, some bloodlines were immune to mind control, not belonging to the majority race of Ymir’s people. Of all these lineages, those who accepted the king’s will without question kept silent and became the noble families of the walls. Those who did not accept the king’s ideology were hunted down by orders of the royal family for generations. These bloodlines were the Ackerman and Azumabito families.

King Fritz, to ensure that his ideology of maintaining world peace at the cost of his empire’s freedom would endure forever, created his “war renunciation pledge,” which meant that only heirs of the royal lineage could use the total power of the founding Titan. In addition, they would inherit their ideology, so no king would reveal the true history nor make any attempt to fight and endanger the world outside the walls.

Thus, Karl’s descendants, having decided to rename themselves and now being known as the Reiss family, were inheriting the power of the Founding Titan and ruling the people of the walls with the same ideology as their predecessor and secretly while posing as a simple, noble family, leaving to the public a false king named Fritz. Since then, the Reiss have remained hidden for approximately 100 years.

How are Historia Reiss and Ymir Fritz related?

Well, we have now explained that the Fritz and Reiss families are basically one and the same. They are one of the major families in the series, and the villainy of King Fritz is responsible for many of the conflicts we’ve seen in the series. To distance themselves from the vile legacy of King Fritz, the family renounced its name and became the Reiss family, continuing to rule over Paradis Island under a new name. Now, the current monarch of Paradis Island, after 2,000 years have passed since King Fritz’s rule, is Historia Reiss.

Knowing that the two families are the same, we can actually confirm that Historia Reiss and Ymir Fritz are directly related. Sure, there’s a 2,000-year gap between the two women, but they are directly related, with Historia being a descendant of Ymir Fritz. This is because King Fritz, when he realized the potential of Ymir’s (then) newly found powers, took her on as his concubine so that she could give him children but also destroy his enemies; two thousand years ago, no country had the weapons to take on the Titans, which gave Fritz an incredible advantage.

And although it did seem as if Ymir was in a slightly better position than before, it was only nominally, as she held no actual position; she still remained a slave to Fritz, only now, she was also his concubine and the mother of his children.

Since Fritz’s and Ymir’s three daughters, Sheena, Rose, and Maria, continued the royal family, Historia Reiss is a descendant of theirs. Since they are Ymir’s daughters, Historis is thus related directly to Ymir Fritz in this way.