The Historical Foundation: The Great Titan War and Its Aftermath

To understand the brutal power structures of Marley and Eldia, one must first trace the conflict back to its mythological roots. Over 2,000 years before the main narrative, a slave girl named Ymir Fritz made a pact with a mysterious, spine-like organism and obtained the power of the Titans. Upon her death, her spirit was split into Nine Titan shifters, each carrying a fragment of her soul. Ymir’s descendants, the Subjects of Ymir, became the Eldian tribe, using the Titans to build a vast and oppressive empire that subjugated countless peoples, including the ancestors of modern Marleyans.

The Eldian Empire’s reign ended with the Great Titan War, a catastrophic civil conflict sparked when the 145th King, Karl Fritz, grew disillusioned with his people’s sins. He conspired with the Tybur family—fellow Eldians who had secretly controlled Marley from the shadows—to stage Marley’s uprising. The king took many Eldians and retreated to the remote island of Paradis, erected three concentric Walls using countless Colossal Titans, and used the Founding Titan’s power to erase their memories of the outside world. He then imposed the Vow Renouncing War, a curse that would prevent any royal-blooded inheritor of the Founding Titan from using its full might to fight back.

This foundational betrayal created a global order where Marley emerged as the dominant military power, but one built on a lie: the Tyburs were hailed as heroes who turned against the Eldian “devils,” while the Eldians who remained on the mainland were corralled into internment zones and treated as subhuman. The real power structures were thus erected not just on military force, but on historical revisionism and a carefully managed narrative of good versus evil.

Marley’s Hierarchical Power Structure

Marley’s government is a militant empire whose entire identity is forged in opposition to the demonized Eldian people. At the apex sits the military high command, but true authority rests with the Tybur family. They are the shadow rulers, descendants of the Eldian who once betrayed King Fritz, and they hold the War Hammer Titan. Their theatrical public statement that they were the real heroes who overthrew Eldia gives them an almost divine legitimacy, allowing them to pull the strings while Marley’s official leaders attend to day-to-day governance.

Beneath the Tyburs, the power ladder is starkly ethnic. Pure-blooded Marleyans occupy all senior government, judicial, and officer roles. The military is the central pillar of society, with the army, navy, and air force all consuming immense resources. Lower-ranking roles may be filled by “Honorary Marleyans”—members of other conquered nations who have proven their loyalty over generations—but they still face discrimination and must constantly prove themselves. At the bottom of the official hierarchy are the Eldians confined to internment zones. They are only valuable as biological weapons: their ability to transform into Titans if injected with spinal fluid makes them the core of Marley’s Warrior Unit.

The Warrior Program itself is a microcosm of Marleyan control. Promising young Eldian children are trained from a young age, indoctrinated to hate their own blood, and forced to compete for the right to inherit one of the seven Titans Marley possesses. The chosen Warriors are granted the status of “Honorary Marleyans” and their families are sheltered from the worst abuses of the internment zone, but they are still tools—their shortened 13-year lifespans are a brutal reminder that they are expendable assets. The elaborate system of propaganda, which paints Eldians as descendants of devils who must atone for millennia of sins, ensures that the Marleyan population at large enthusiastically supports this oppression. As analysts have noted, these tactics mirror real-world fascist methods of othering and dehumanization to justify atrocity.

The internment zone of Liberio exemplifies Marley’s architecture of control. Surrounded by high walls, watchtowers, and a permanent garrison, it is less a district and more a prison. Eldians must wear armbands that identify them, and their movements are restricted. Access to education, healthcare, and decent work is severely limited, creating a dependent underclass that can be easily manipulated. Periodic public “purging” operations, where dissidents are turned into Pure Titans and paraded, remind the population of the consequences of disobedience. This dual structure—a remote ghetto combined with a propaganda machine—allows Marley to extract maximum military value from Eldians while keeping them in perpetual fear.

Eldian Society: Caste, Walls, and the Struggle for Identity

Eldian society is far from uniform. It exists in two disconnected worlds: the isolated kingdom behind the Walls on Paradis Island and the oppressed diaspora within Marley’s territory. Both are rigidly hierarchical, but in entirely different ways, and the clash between these internal hierarchies fuels the narrative’s central tragedies.

Paradis Island: Life Behind the Walls

Behind the three concentric Walls—Maria, Rose, and Sina—the Eldian population lives in ignorance of the outside world, believing themselves to be the last remnants of humanity. The monarchy, seated in the innermost city of Mitras, exercises absolute authority, but it is itself a puppet institution. The true power is held by the Reiss family, descendants of the Fritz bloodline who possess the Founding Titan but are shackled by the Vow Renouncing War. They maintain the facade of a “fake king” on the throne while ruling through the Wall Cult, a religious order that preaches pacifism and submission to the Walls as divine protectors. The First Interior Squad polices any curiosity about the outside world, ruthlessly eliminating dissidents.

Socio-economic stratification is extreme. The citizens of Sina’s interior live in luxury, convinced that only they are worthy of safety. The outermost wall, Maria, is largely inhabited by poorer farmers and laborers who are viewed as expendable. The Military Police Brigade, supposedly an elite unit protecting the king, is corrupt and abuses its power to maintain this status quo. The Survey Corps, the one branch that dares to venture outside the Walls, is starved of funding and treated as a joke by the general populace, its real purpose—exploration and search for truth—deliberately undermined. The underground city beneath Mitras houses the destitute and criminalized, a permanent underclass that the state ignores. This internal oppression mirrors Marley’s system in many ways: a small elite uses Titan-derived power and manufactured fear to keep the masses compliant.

The Warrior Program and Internment Zone Oppression

In Liberio and other internment zones across Marley, Eldians live as second-class citizens. Their very existence is a “privilege” granted by the state, and their loyalty is constantly scrutinized. The Warrior Program recruits children, not adults, because indoctrination is most effective at a young age. Candidates like Reiner Braun, Bertolt Hoover, Annie Leonhart, and later Gabi Braun, are taught that the island of Paradis is full of “devils” who threaten the world, and that sacrificing their own lives for Marley will bring redemption to their families. This creates a profound psychological split: Warriors must suppress their natural empathy to commit atrocities, leading to fractured identities and trauma that reverberate throughout the series.

The role of the Warrior Candidate families is also critical. A Warrior’s family receives special status, moving to the inner parts of Liberio and receiving better food and housing, but this comes at the cost of constant pressure. Parents parade their children like prized assets; failure to secure a Titan is seen as a deep shame. The 13-year lifespan of a Titan shifter hangs over every celebration, turning children into sacrificial lambs. This internal hierarchy of privilege within the oppressed community—where those with Warrior bloodlines are elevated above ordinary internment zone Eldians—preempts solidarity and makes collective rebellion almost impossible.

The Eldian Restoration Movement

Not all Eldians accepted Marley’s narrative. In the years before the main story, a clandestine group called the Eldian Restorationists, led by Grisha Yeager and secretly supported by an undercover Marleyan officer known as Eren Kruger (the holder of the Attack Titan), sought to revive the Eldian Empire. Their ideology was a direct counter to Marley’s propaganda: they believed that the Eldian people were once a great and noble race, and that the true history had been erased. Grisha’s younger sister was murdered by Marleyan soldiers in broad daylight, an event that radicalized him. The movement operated in the shadows, eventually planning a coup, but was betrayed by Grisha’s own son, Zeke, who turned them in to the Marleyan authorities to save himself and his grandparents.

The Restorationists’ failed rebellion was brutally crushed. Grisha and other captured members were taken to the shores of Paradis, turned into Pure Titans, and set loose to wander endlessly. This event is the direct catalyst for the entire story: before his transformation, Kruger passed the Attack Titan and his own mission to Grisha, leading to Grisha’s journey behind the Walls, his confrontation with the Reiss family, and the inheritance by Eren. The movement’s tragic end illustrates how an oppressed people’s yearning for freedom can be manipulated, crushed, and ultimately rebound through more extreme means.

The Nine Titans: Embodiments of Power and Suffering

The Titans are far more than military assets; they are living symbols of the power dynamics between Marley and Eldia, each carrying a distinct thematic weight. The Nine Titans are fragmented from the soul of Ymir Fritz, and their holders inherit not only overwhelming abilities but also the memories and conflicts of their predecessors, blurring the line between individual identity and collective heritage.

The Founding Titan is the ultimate prize. Its power to control all other Titans, to alter the biology and memories of Eldians, and to command the Wall Titans makes it the keystone of both Marley’s military ambitions and Eldia’s potential liberation. However, the Vow Renouncing War ensures that no inheritor of royal blood can ever unleash its true capacity, thus the Founding Titan remains a dormant god as long as the Reiss bloodline holds it. This restriction turns the entire Eldian monarchy into a political prisoner of its own power.

The Attack Titan is unique because it has always fought for freedom, refusing to bow to any king or army. Its secret ability—to send memories back through time to previous inheritors—allows a continuous thread of resistance to exist across centuries. Eren Kruger, Grisha Yeager, and ultimately Eren Yeager himself are linked by visions of a future massacre, a deterministic loop that raises disturbing questions about free will. The Attack Titan never fell into Marleyan hands, and its very nature subverts the established hierarchy.

Marley’s arsenal includes the Colossal Titan, a 60-meter giant capable of releasing a nuclear-scale blast of steam; the Armored Titan, whose hardened plates can shatter gates and shrug off cannon fire; the Female Titan, whose versatility and ability to summon Pure Titans make it a perfect infiltration tool; the Beast Titan, with its devastating throwing abilities and beast-like form, famously wielded by Zeke Yeager with royal blood augmentations; the Cart Titan, a quadrupedal form with extreme endurance that serves as a mobile logistics platform; and the Jaw Titan, built for speed and close-quarters destruction. The War Hammer Titan, held by the Tybur family, can create weapons and structures from hardened Titan flesh and can be remotely operated, reflecting the family’s detached, god-like control over global affairs.

Each Titan represents a different facet of the cycle of violence. The Armored Titan is a walking fortress, yet its duty to break Wall Maria doomed Reiner to a lifetime of guilt and split personality. The Colossal Titan is the embodiment of overwhelming destruction, but its user, Bertolt, was a passive young man forced into the role of a mass murderer. The Cart Titan is worked like a beast of burden, its holder Pieck forced to spend months in Titan form, a chilling parallel to the labor exploitation of Eldians. Understanding these symbolic roles is essential to grasping why the struggle over Titan inheritance is never just about firepower—it is about identity, trauma, and the inheritance of historical sin.

Ideological Warfare: Marley’s Dominance vs. Eldian Liberation

The conflict between Marley and Eldia is not merely a territorial dispute but a clash of irreconcilable worldviews. Marley’s ideology is rooted in the belief that Eldians are genetic devils whose only path to atonement is through servitude and self-erasure. The state indoctrinates its own population to believe that the world would be safer if all Eldians were dead, while simultaneously depending on Eldian Titan shifters to maintain its empire. This cognitive dissonance is held together by an unrelenting propaganda campaign and the constant threat of violence.

Eldian liberation ideologies, conversely, are fractured. The moderate Reformist position—advocated by characters like Eren Kruger and later the anti-Yeagerist alliance—aims for coexistence, seeking to prove that Eldians are not inherently monstrous and that the cycle can be broken through mutual understanding. The radical Restorationist position, embraced by the Yeagerist faction on Paradis, argues that the world will never accept Eldians and that the only solution is to assert dominance through the Rumbling: unleashing the millions of Colossal Titans within the Walls to flatten all life beyond the island. Eren Yeager’s eventual choice to initiate a full-scale Rumbling is the catastrophic endpoint of this ideology, born from the trauma of witnessing his mother’s death and the unending hatred of the outside world.

Zeke Yeager’s “euthanasia plan” represents a third, deeply nihilistic approach: sterilize all Eldians so that the people will fade away within a century, ending the conflict by annihilating the bloodline itself. This plan, while horrifying, is a logical extension of Marleyan propaganda that says Eldian existence is the problem. Zeke, who betrayed his parents to save himself, internalized the self-loathing that Marley cultivates and turned it into a genocidal solution. The clash between Eren’s genocidal freedom, Zeke’s genocidal peace, and the Alliance’s desperate plea for diplomacy encapsulates the series’ core question: can a cycle of hatred this deep ever be broken without absolute annihilation?

Shifting Alliances and the Collapse of Old Orders

The power structures of Marley and Eldia are not static. As the story progresses, technology begins to outpace the Titans. Marley, having relied on Titan warfare for a century, is losing its strategic advantage to rising nations with artillery, aviation, and anti-Titan cannons. The Mid-East Allied Forces’ anti-Titan armor, capable of piercing the Armored Titan, demonstrates that the era of Titan supremacy is ending. This existential threat drives Marley to accelerate its plan to seize the Founding Titan from Paradis, which in turn pushes Eren to take preemptive action.

On Paradis Island, the discovery of the truth in Grisha’s basement shatters the old order. The Reiss monarchy is overthrown in a coup, and the military takes control under the leadership of Historia Reiss as a figurehead queen. The revelation that the Walls contain sleeping Colossal Titans and that humanity thrives beyond the sea forces the island’s society to rapidly modernize and engage in diplomacy with the nation of Hizuru. But the world’s unified hatred—stoked by Marley’s propaganda at the Global Forum—makes peace impossible. Willy Tybur’s dramatic declaration of war against Paradis before an international audience, which ends with Eren’s Attack Titan crushing the stage and killing hundreds, signals the complete collapse of any diplomatic framework. The old hierarchy, where Marley dictated global policy through the Tybur family’s influence, crumbles into open, total warfare.

Real-World Parallels and Thematic Resonance

The power structures in Attack on Titan draw heavily from historical atrocities, making the story’s examination of fascism, racism, and imperialism strikingly relevant. The internment zones where Eldians wear identifying armbands and are confined behind walls are direct reflections of Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. The systemic indoctrination of children, the glorification of martyrdom, and the belief that a specific ethnic group carries an inherent taint of evil parallel the worst excesses of 20th-century totalitarian regimes. As cultural critics have extensively explored, the series does not offer simple good-versus-evil binaries. Eren’s transformation from a heroic underdog to a perpetrator of genocide challenges the audience to confront how victims of oppression can themselves become oppressors when given absolute power.

Marley’s use of the “war guilt clause” rhetoric—forcing Eldians to bear collective responsibility for ancient crimes—mirrors the punitive aftermath of World War I, where the humiliation of a nation sowed the seeds for an even bloodier conflict. The Tybur family’s theatrical confession of past sins to an international audience before redirecting that rage toward Paradis is an exercise in political theater designed to consolidate power through manufactured external enemies. Similarly, the Yeagerist movement’s fusion of national trauma, militarism, and a messianic chosen-one narrative reflects how populist movements can co-opt liberation struggles to justify horrific acts. These parallels are not accidental; the author, Hajime Isayama, has spoken in interviews about his fascination with how societies rewrite history to justify violence.

Conclusion: The Enduring Legacy of the Titans’ Hierarchy

The hierarchy of Marley and Eldia is a meticulously constructed system of control that extends from the divine mythology of Ymir Fritz down to the squalid internment zones of Liberio and the caste-divided streets within the Walls. It is a world where power is always concentrated in the hands of those who control the narrative, the Titans, and the means of production—be they Marleyan generals, Tybur puppet masters, or the Reiss monarchy. The series’ genius lies in showing that every layer of this hierarchy contains its own fractures, its own oppressed groups who may one day rise up, only to risk perpetuating the very violence that defined their suffering.

The Titans’ hierarchy ultimately crumbles because it is unsustainable. The limited lifespan of the shifters, the advancement of ordinary human technology, and the inevitable rebellion of the subjugated all chip away at the foundations. Yet the story refuses to offer a comforting answer about what comes after the destruction of an oppressive order. The final image—of a world scarred by the Rumbling and still festering with hatred—serves as a warning: the hierarchies of power we build, whether out of fear or ambition, will always produce ghosts unless we find a way to step outside the cycle entirely. Understanding the intricate power structures of Marley and Eldia, then, is not just an academic exercise for fans; it is a lens through which to examine our own world’s enduring struggles over identity, justice, and the high cost of freedom.