The First King and the First Ackerman: Why we can't really trust any timeline this series tries to give us
I hold this truth to be self-evident, as someone who is arguably too old to be on Tumblr (currently around Levi's mysterious age), that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass, and the easier it is to forget what happened last week if it wasn't particularly exciting. I've spent chunks of the last four months saying that a friend's son was "born last month." I go looking for a work email that I swear I got last week and it's from three weeks prior. Hell, when I was in high school, my overambitious best friend (we've all got one, but mine did pre-professional ballet, played 2 or 3 musical instruments,& whatever classes weren't advanced placement were esoteric independent studies) described his memory's timeline as "If it didn't happen today, and it didn't happen yesterday, it happened 'the other day'." And you don't have to look particularly hard to find psychology studies detailing just how easy it is to plant false memories in someone's head.
Now, according to Rod Reiss, his daughter Frida could have used the power of the First King to stop the invasion of the Titan then-Duo, and possibly eradicated every last titan on earth. Even if this was a lie to clinch Historia's loyalty and convince her to make a midnight snack of Eren's spinal fluid (the First King’s Power goes to 11), we know there's at least a hint of truth to this. As readers, we're so far aware of two powers of the First King Titan:
1) The Coordinate, which allows someone to control or heavily influence non-shifter titans, and
2) the power of mass amnesia, which he used to wipe all memories of pre-walled humanity.
So when Rod says,
he could mean either using the coordinate to make all titans march single-file into the sea to be eaten by hungry whales eager for vengeance against something that at least looks like the things that used to harpoon the hell out of them, or he could mean using the coordinate to clear the walls of titans and collective amnesia to wipe his subjects' memory of the event.
The first method almost guarantees that his family would have to fight with the titan shifter clan, with a strong possibility that they'd lose. I mean, Frida lost against Grisha, and his everyday demeanor is that of a normal man wrapped in a marshmallow and deception. The second option allows Rod not only to stay in the relative peace and quiet behind the walls, but probably stay alive, quite likely keep his crown, and preserve the philosophy of the First King (hereinafter "1K"), who for some reason felt it necessary not to destroy the titans outside the wall and keep humanity relatively content and clueless inside the walls.
Consider this: if you don't erase too long a period of time (say, an entire growing season, or any time where the leaves have fallen off the trees, or a period of time with able markers that even a person without a calendar would notice), you could probably get away with forcing everyone inside the walls to forget that a 55m-tall Visible Gumby and a 15m-tall Rob Gronkowski lookalike broke through Shiganshina, was compelled or beaten back, and that everyone not responsible for food production had to go rebuild the city for no pay. Hell, get Shiganshina rebuilt in a year to the day and you could hypothetically pretend like nothing ever happened. It just becomes a collective nightmare that everybody eventually forgets.
Rod Reiss is many things, among them a pretty skilled dead-eyed liar and an inveterate coward. So if this is an option, I bet he knows it. And I bet he knows it because something like it has probably happened before (I'll have at least one theory for Friday about this, and I promise I'll actually post that one before midnight), and quite likely more than once. But how would we know that? Well, 1K was nice enough to give us a control group: the minority noble families, including the still-nameless Asians and the Ackermans.
First, let's get the collective assumptions about the Ackermans out of the way:
1) They tend to run from "taller than average" to "Tall Drink of Water" in height (obvious exception: Levi), with an athletic build scaled to their height
2) They age ridiculously well (case in point: Levi)
3) They heal like they're the actual descendents of Wolverine (Free Crack Week Thesis: The Ackermans Are Actual Decendents of Wolverine, But, Like, Probably Hugh Jackman Wolverine Because Most of Them Are Not Particularly Short)
Gramps Ackerman (hereinafter, "Ackergramps") tells Kenny in Chapter 65 that he was one of the first generation born inside the walls. According to the timeline given at the 104th Cadets Corps's graduation, the titans first appeared and began to gnosh on humanity in 743 (107 years before 850). This means the earliest Ackergramps could have been born was 743/44. Kuchel's kid that Kenny references is likely Levi, and if Levi is in his early 30s in 850, that puts the Kenny/Ackergramps conversation happening somewhere in the 815-820 range. If he was born immediately upon getting inside the wall, his would make Ackergramps (hereinafter hereinafter "AG" because "Ackergramps" takes way longer to type than I ever imagined) somewhere between 71 and 77.
That's certainly a reasonably ripe old age for someone living in a civilization with tech/aesthetic that falls someewhere between Pieter Brugels paintings and Steampunk WWI. But given the definitey-not-Wolverine healing factor, dying in your 70s seems somewhat unbecoming an Ackerman. Given how it seems to keep them baby-faced into old age (for god's sake look at early series Levi he looks like a 12 year old with chronic hay fever and/or insomnia, and Chapter 65 Kenny has the physique of a tall guy who is old enough to have filled in from a gangly-tall teenager phase but who stole a young man's face, House of Black and White style...an Ackerman is No One), I don't think it would be out of the question for Ackergramps to be dying at an age that most people would find preposterous, and despite “average” ages from A Long Time Ago being ridiculously low, living into the 70s isn’t exactly preposterous.
(Seriously, you hear about how the "average" age of someone in, say, the middle ages was around 30 and you think everyone drops dead at 30. No, the extremely high infant mortality rate and the fact that we used to put kids to work with farm equipment and early Industrial Revolution equipment and animals that like to kick small people who act like jerks around them meant that a lot of people died really young in the past and skewed the average down. If you made it to adulthood, odds were pretty good you'd live long and prosper. If there wasn't a war.)
Additionally, consider that AG is getting information about their family's service to 1K entirely secondhand. If he were born almost immediately when 1K's reign began, you'd think he'd have some vague memories of his family's prosperity (unless the Ackermans almost immediately annoyed 1K which, given how the most recent 2 generations behave, is...entirely possible), of a time when they needed to flee. It's quite likely he was born after they pissed off his royal titanship and went into hiding. Which would make him younger than his 70s.
And I've got further reason to believe he was born well after the walls went up. (That's right, I'm still not done with this theory. Thanks for reading, btw.) And that reason is this weird kid:
When I first read Chapter 5 ("Side Story: Captain Levi"), I'd initially assumed that creepy kid with the baggy Levi eyes was a young Levi, before I realized that was supposed to be the very distant past. (Free Crack Thesis: That Creepy Kid Totally Is Levi and Levi is over 107 Years Old.) Visions of the past and visions from a distant place don't happen in this series without a character we know being present. When someone isn't present, or when they're imagining the worst thing that could happen, those panels are usually grayed out. The opening pages of Chapter 5 are not grayed out, so it's reasonable to assume that we're looking at something that actually happened, and given the context of this being a side story about Levi, it's also reasonable to assume that this Levi-looking kid (and the vaguely Kenny-looking adult) are distant relatives of his.
Someone had to live long enough to tell the story of the time they were surrounded by titans, long enough for their panels not to be grayed out by heresay. At least one of those three got to Wall Maria, and I strongly suspect that their trip involved a calm exterior, audible heartbeat, and very-much-not-dead-eyed Murder Visage of an unstoppable Goliath-slayer. And it wasn't either of the frozen-solid adults.
Call Creepy Eyes Baby the First Ackerman! He made it to Wall Maria with a trail of evaporating titan corpses behind him, became an immediate hit with 1K (who was none too keen on other titans) and the nobles (who probably didn't mind the idea of having someone around who could somehow murder giants, in case 1K got out of hand). He eventually married and settled down, maybe had a few sprogs of his own before pissing off 1K, sending his family into hiding, and offering himself up as a living effigy to the Ackerclan. And unless he was having kids as a teenager (not out of the question, but we’ll assume he was at least in his 20s), he was likely within the walls for over a decade before he had any kids of his own. Putting Ackergramps in his 60s, which is a pretty unreasonably young age for someone to be dying of being old, especially when he’s a decendent of Bruce Willis in Unbreakable. And considering that Kenny could well be approaching that age when he first appears in the narrative but doesn’t look like he’s been pre-emptively mummified, the "107 years" timeline we've been given seems more and more inconceivable.
(Aside: And holy crap now I want the story of Highly Resourceful Ackermom Who Didn't Have the Power of A Genetic Murder Visage and Had To Somehow Keep Her Family Safely Hidden From Her Late Husband's Enemies, Who Include Not Just The King But Aso Every Noble Family With the Financial Means To Hunt Them Down Like Injured Foxes, But For Some Reason Couldn't Tell Them Why They Were Running Before She Herself Also Died. Because it may well have been "The Ackermans don't think we should re-wipe humanity's memory after we've cleaned up this titan attack." And you'd best believe 1K wiped humanity's memory of the Ackermen and the unnamed Asian family once they were persona non grata. You don't want anyone loyal to the people who speak out against you.
Oh, fascism. You so untenable.)
Tl;dr: I guarantee you this attack on Wall Maria isn't the first time the Titan Shifter War Tribes have tried to get in. It's probably not even the first time they've succeeded. It's just the first time humanity as a whole been allowed to remember it, and that’s part of the reason Eren’s crying while dreaming at the very start of the series. The First Ackerman passed down not only his Murder Visage and healing factor, but also his baggy eyes and impetuous mouth. In retaliation over some disagreement, the First King effectively excommunicated the whole Ackerclan and continued to wipe humanity's minds whenever some Shifters figured out how to breach a wall, potentially adding years to the timeline we've been given in the series.
About a month ago I wrote a post showing the expression of each Ackerman as they recognized the person they were most connected to. As it turns out, I forgot someone. There’s another character who has shown the same fierce Acker-attachment. Someone who, upon examining the evidence, I must assume is also an Ackerman.
I am referring, of course, to Ymir. I mean, seriously, just look at her face as she learned of the existence of Historia Reiss while hiding in the church. From that moment on, Ymir’s sole focus was to find and protect Historia.
It’s not just her loyalty to Historia that makes me think she’s an Ackerman. There’s also her last name, or lack thereof, and her unique personal history that lend support to this theory.
Her last name is easy to explain. Like most Ackerman children, it was a necessary to hide her identity. Like Levi, she’s mostly unaware of her family line. Thus she showed no recognition or curiosity about Mikasa.
But more interesting is Ymir’s personal history. She told Historia that as a child she was ‘sacrificed to bring happiness to people”.
Similar verbiage was used when Kenny’s grandfather discussed the Ackerman family head of generations past. “He offered his own life to ensure the survival of the other Ackermans and was executed.” Is it possible Ymir is connected to the clan leader? Maybe it wasn’t just the Ackerman head, but his entire family who was sacrificed. Ymir’s age and the duration of her time as a titan all fit this scenario. She’s an early Ackerman, the “Y” generation. She lived, and “died”, during the initial purge.
There are yet many mysteries involving Ymir. We need to know if the Titan in Ilsa’s notebook worshipped her. We need to know how she can read a forgotten language. And we need to know where she’s been since chapter 50 and when she’s coming back. Thankfully, Ymir’s last name is no longer one of the mysteries that surround her.
ok but what if Ackermans have been persecuted not only because they were resitant to memory erasing but because in titan-shifter form they were able to bring back the memories to others
The thing about the Ackermans is: they’re amazing supersoldiers… but not all of them happen to profit from this genetic quirk. There are Ackermans who experience the Awakening and proceed to achieve ultimate fighting badassery, but there are also Ackermans who scrape by as normal humans, no matter how dire their circumstances get.
Some are Kenny, some are Kuchel. Some are Mikasa, some are her dad.
And you could say that it’s just because some of them don’t get the chance for their powers to unlock. Like, maybe they just never encounter the battle circumstances that are needed for it, don’t get the push for their will to surge and flick that switch inside their brains.
But here’s a much more likely explanation: everyone who gets special powers is in fact possessed by the ghost of the First Ackerman.
The First Ackerman was the first of their line to get these amazing skills, and, like the Reiss powers and the coordinate, his fighting abilities are passed down from generation to generation. The Reiss coordinate holders inherit the memories of their ancestor. The powerful Ackermans don’t inherit the memories of the First Ackerman, but they inherit his powers. It’s a convenient way to share family love that doesn’t involve snacking on your relatives! The Ackermans have it much better than the Reisses.
And this is, in fact, the source of their discord. The Reisses have always been mildly jealous of the fact that the Ackermans have their inheritance deal unlocked in a far less traumatic fashion, but for a long time they were willing to put up with it just for how useful the Ackermans were. One doesn’t, after all, alienate one’s supersoldier subjects.
And that went well… until the day when the ghost of the First Ackerman just buggered off and didn’t haunt a whole bunch of the king’s special elite forces. This coincided with the First King building the wall and putting humanity inside it. The First Ackerman just didn’t feel the wall thing, you know? He wasn’t down for it. So he just kind of… didn’t turn up for a while.
This was a source of major embarrassment for the Ackerman clan, and it made the Reisses realize that this was their time to strike in a way the Ackermans couldn’t retaliate against.
So the Ackermans went down. Hard.
When the ghost of the First Ackerman returned, he was like, I leave you guys for five minutes and my whole family’s in shambles, what the hell. So he got back into the business of haunting those of the Ackermans who were showing signs of promise, and he’s planning to stick it out until the end now.
Because no one puts his Ackerman babies in the corner.
