Attack on Titan: Why Did Ymir Fritz Get Killed?

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, we have decided to focus on just one in today’s article, and that is Ymir Fritz’s death in Attack on Titan. In this article, you are going to find out how and why Ymir Fritz got killed in Attack on Titan, as we are going to give you all the details from the story.

Ymir Fritz died because she jumped in to protect her husband, King Fritz, from an enemy soldier’s assassination. Her death was an intentional sacrifice resulting from her slave mentality, a mentality that she kept despite being able to transform into a Titan and later becoming Fritz’s concubine. She had been a slave for so long that she could not lose that mentality.

The rest of this article will tell you about Ymir Fritz and her tragic fate in Attack on Titan, i.e., how she became such an important, albeit tragic, figure in the story. 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.

How did Ymir Fritz die in Attack on Titan?

Ymir was a slave of the warlike Eldia tribe who lived around 2,000 years ago. After their village was attacked and slaughtered by the Eldia tribe, Ymir and other survivors became slaves and had their tongues cut out. One day some pigs escaped from the settlement, whereupon the tribal leader, Fritz, had all the slaves assembled and demanded a culprit. He threatened to have the eyes of all the slaves gouged out if the guilty person was not identified. Several slaves then referred Ymir, after which Fritz sadistically decided to “set Ymir free.”

While running away, Ymir was hit by several arrows and eventually collapsed in a clearing. There, however, she saw a huge tree in a clearing in the forest. Since there was a cavernous hole in the tree, Ymir stumbled into it to escape pursuers. However, in the cave inside the tree, she suddenly fell into a hole and plunged into an underground lake composed of an unknown liquid. Ymir’s contact with the liquid linked her spine to a previously unknown life form, the “source of all living matter,” causing Ymir to transform into a giant, humanoid monster.

Although she had become the first Titan ever and possessed immeasurable powers, she remained true to her slave mentality and returned to the Eldia tribe. Without a will of her own, she served the tribal leader, who used her powers to cultivate his lands and expand his power. After a few years, Fritz chose Ymir to bear his children and thus mixed their power with his blood. Also, in the following years, Fritz used his slave Ymir to destroy his enemies – especially the Marley – and also to give birth to children. He had three daughters with Ymir named Sheena, Rose, and Maria.

One day – thirteen years after Ymir received her Titan powers – Fritz, now king of the Eldia Empire, accepted the oath of allegiance of some vanquished enemies, and Ymir and her three daughters stood at his side. However, one of the enemies jumped up, drew a hidden spear, and hurled it at Fritz. Ymir noticed this in time, and as a faithful slave, she jumped into the spear’s trajectory to protect her master’s life. The spear entered her body under Ymir’s armpit and pierced her spine.

As Ymir slowly lost consciousness, her soul suddenly found itself in an empty sand plain of a spiritual dimension. Her human body was hacked to pieces by King Fritz, and he ordered all three of Ymir’s daughters to eat her body so that Ymir’s powers would not be lost. In fact, Ymir’s Titan powers were inherited that way. Since Ymir only lived 13 years after gaining her titan powers, all other titan shifters since then have always died 13 years after gaining their powers. This phenomenon has been dubbed the “Curse of Ymir.”

To forestall this, the bearers were always eaten beforehand by their respective successors, thus ensuring that the power of the titans would be preserved. As a result of this inheritance, nine new Titans were created from the power of Ymir, each carrying an aspect of Ymir’s titan power. These nine titans continued the triumphant march of the Eldian Empire that had reigned for centuries. From then on, Ymir herself was trapped in the dimension of the Path, which exists beyond space and time. Whenever a wielder of the Titan power created a Titan, Ymir was forced to create that Titan from the sands of the dimension, which took a long time but involved no loss of time in the real world.

Why did Ymir Fritz die in Attack on Titan?

Now that we have explained the factual circumstances surrounding her death allow us to provide you with a proper psychological analysis of Ymir and her actions. The root of the fact that Ymir sacrificed herself to save King Frtiz lies in the fact that Ymir was a slave and a slave of Fritz’s at that. Although she wasn’t that old when Fritz released her as part of his morbid punishment, she had already been heavily conditioned by the time. Her conditioning was actually the reason for her servile attitude.

Namely, just imagine how strong the conditioning must have been when Ymir, once she accidentally obtained the Power of the Titans, which granted her the possibility to do anything since King Fritz could do absolutely nothing against her at the time (remember, this happened around 2,000 years before the current timeline), simply reverted back to her former self and submitted to Fritz once again. She could have used her powers to kill him, to force him into submission, to free herself and the other enslaved people, but she simply – happy that she has survived – returned back to Fritz and once again became his slave, albeit in a slightly different “costume” now.

Namely, as we have said, the slick King Fritz soon realized the potential of Ymir’s powers, so he 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.

This was best seen moments before she actually died. We have explained the circumstances of this event, but the fact that Ymir, who was the mother of the King’s children, was still owned by Fritz tells us everything about her position. She had the power to free herself, but the conditioning was so strong that she was wholly broken as a person.

Her only goal in life was to serve and protect King Fritz, her brutal abuser, who did not care about her at all. She sacrificed her own life to save him, and as a sign of gratitude, the villain had his daughters eat her corpse so that her powers could be preserved for future generations. And that is Ymir’s tragedy – she had the power to do anything she wanted, yet she had been broken so much that she only wanted to be a slave to her abuser.