By # From You, 2,000 Years Ago: How Eren Yeager Absolved a God of Her Suffering
**What You'll Learn:**
- The complete tragic backstory of Ymir Fritz—the first Titan, enslaved for 2,000 years
- Why Eren was the only person in history who could free her
- The prophetic structure of Attack on Titan: how the ending was embedded in the first chapter
- The philosophy of the Attack Titan: memory inheritance and time transcendence
- The parallels to Master Chief's luck—chosen ones across different universes
- Why this scene is one of the most profound moments in anime history
***
In the Paths—that endless desert of sand beneath a sky that holds no sun—a girl has been building Titans for 2,000 years.
She doesn't age. She doesn't rest. She doesn't speak. She simply exists, shaping bodies from sand, obeying commands from royal blood, serving a king who has been dead for two millennia but whose will still echoes through her chains.
Her name is Ymir Fritz. She is the Founder. The origin of all Titans. The source of Eldian power.
**And she is a slave.**
Not metaphorically. Literally. A slave in life, enslaved by King Fritz who used her power to conquer nations. A slave in death, bound by his final command to serve his bloodline forever. A god who never wanted to be a god, trapped in an eternity of servitude because she never learned—was never *allowed* to learn—that she could choose otherwise.
For 2,000 years, she waited.
And then Eren Yeager arrived.
## The Tragedy of Ymir Fritz
To understand why Eren freeing Ymir is one of the most profound moments in storytelling, you need to understand who Ymir was. Not the goddess. Not the Founder. **The girl.**
Approximately 2,000 years before the events of Attack on Titan, Ymir was a nameless child living in a village conquered by the Eldian tribe. When the Eldians took control, they cut out the tongues of everyone in the village—a symbolic and literal silencing of the conquered. Ymir, a small girl with no family or status, became a slave.
She served King Fritz—not out of loyalty but because she had no choice. She was property. Less than human. Invisible.
Then something happened.
Some pigs escaped their pen. The other slaves blamed Ymir. King Fritz, as punishment, gave her "freedom"—he released her into the forest to be hunted like an animal.
Running from arrows, bleeding from wounds, Ymir stumbled into a massive tree and fell into a pool of water beneath its roots. There, in the darkness, something attached itself to her spine—a creature later theorized to be a primordial life form, the source of all Titan power.
**Ymir emerged as the first Titan.**
Here's where it gets heartbreaking.
Any normal person, given godlike power after a lifetime of abuse, would have destroyed their abusers. They would have crushed King Fritz. They would have freed the other slaves. They would have taken revenge on a world that had shown them nothing but cruelty.
**Ymir didn't.**
She returned to King Fritz. She knelt before him. She offered him her power.
Why? Because she had internalized her slavery so completely that she couldn't imagine another way. Because abuse had warped her capacity to understand that she had value. Because—and this is the most tragic part—**she loved him.**
Not healthy love. Not reciprocated love. The desperate, Stockholm syndrome love of someone who has been shown so little kindness that even their abuser's tolerance feels like affection. King Fritz used her body for conquest and for children. He never loved her. He never saw her as human. But she loved him anyway, because she had no template for what love was supposed to look like.
For 13 years, Ymir served as Fritz's weapon. She built infrastructure, crushed rebellions, expanded his empire from a small tribe to a dominant civilization. She bore him three daughters—Maria, Rose, and Sheina.
And then an assassin threw a spear at King Fritz.
**Ymir could have let it hit him.** She could have regenerated from any wound. She was essentially immortal. Instead, she stepped in front of the spear. She took the blow meant for the man who had enslaved her.
She died protecting her abuser.
But that wasn't the end.
King Fritz, standing over her body, commanded his daughters to eat their mother's corpse—to consume her spine and inherit her power. He told them to have children, to continue the bloodline, to ensure that Titan power would serve his descendants forever.
**And then he issued his final command to Ymir:**
Even in death, she was to serve. Her soul would exist in the Paths—a dimension outside of time where all Eldians are connected—and she would continue building Titans for the royal bloodline. Forever.
For 2,000 years, Ymir obeyed.
## The Paths: A Prison Outside of Time
The Paths dimension is one of the most fascinating pieces of world-building in Attack on Titan.
Imagine a place where time doesn't flow normally. Where the consciousness of every Eldian who has ever lived remains connected. Where the memories of every Titan shifter echo across generations. A realm of sand and silence, existing beneath the surface of reality like the root system of an infinite tree.
In this place, Ymir Fritz has spent two millennia building.
Every time a Titan is created—every Pure Titan, every Shifter, every transformation—it's because Ymir builds the body from sand in the Paths. She receives the command through the bloodline connection to royal blood, and she constructs the Titan form that manifests in the physical world.
**She never stops. She never rests. She has been doing this for 2,000 years.**
The cruelty of this is staggering. Not just physical labor, but complete isolation. No one speaks to her. No one acknowledges her. She exists only to serve, as she existed in life. Death brought no release—only an eternity of the same enslavement.
And here's the key detail: **Ymir could have stopped at any time.**
The Paths operate on her will. The Titan powers flow through her. She is the Founder—the source. If she chose to stop building, to stop serving, the entire system would collapse.
But she doesn't choose that. Because she was never taught that she *could* choose. The chains King Fritz placed on her weren't physical—they were psychological. She serves because she believes serving is all she is. All she's worth. All she was ever meant to do.
**She is a god who doesn't know she's free.**
## The Attack Titan's Gift
Now we need to talk about the Attack Titan—and why Eren Yeager, specifically, was the one who could reach Ymir.
Among the Nine Titans split from Ymir's power, the Attack Titan has a unique ability: **it can send and receive memories across time.**
Not just from past inheritors to future inheritors—that's standard for all Titans. The Attack Titan can send memories *backward.* Future holders can transmit visions to past holders, creating a form of time transcendence that doesn't violate causality because the timeline is **fixed.**
This is crucial: Attack on Titan operates on deterministic principles. The future is set in stone—but it's set in stone **because** of the choices the characters make. There's no paradox because Eren's future actions cause his past self to move toward those actions. It's a closed loop, but one where free will and determinism coexist.
Eren inherited the Attack Titan from his father, Grisha Yeager. But here's the mind-bending part: **Eren sent memories backward to Grisha, manipulating his father into stealing the Founding Titan so that Eren could eventually inherit it.**
The Attack Titan has always moved toward freedom. Every holder throughout history has fought against oppression, against tyranny, against the chains that bind humanity. The Titan's very nature is resistance.
And Eren—born with an almost pathological obsession with freedom—was the perfect inheritor.
## "You Are Not a Slave. You Are Not a God. You're Just a Person."
The scene happens in Episode 80 of the anime, adapted from Chapter 122 of the manga.
Eren has just been shot by Gabi, his head severed from his body. In the instant before death, Zeke—his half-brother, who possesses royal blood—catches his head, and the contact with royal blood activates the Founding Titan's power.
Eren and Zeke are transported to the Paths.
Zeke, who has been waiting there, explains his plan: using the Founding Titan to sterilize all Eldians, preventing them from having children, ending the Titan curse by letting the Eldian race die out peacefully over one generation. He believes this is mercy—an end to the suffering that Ymir's power has caused.
But there's a problem.
Even though Zeke has royal blood, **Ymir won't obey him.** She stands motionless, unresponsive to his commands. He realizes that someone broke the vow renouncing war—the psychological binding that Karl Fritz placed on the Founding Titan 100 years ago. Without that vow, Ymir isn't compelled to obey royal blood.
Eren breaks free from Zeke's control and runs to Ymir.
And this is the scene.
Zeke, desperate, screams at Ymir: **"Obey my order! You are a slave!"**
He's using the same language King Fritz used. The same framework. Commanding her, defining her as property, reinforcing the chains she's worn for 2,000 years.
Eren reaches her. He looks at this small girl—because in the Paths, Ymir appears as she was when she first gained her power: a child—and he does something no one has ever done.
**He sees her as a person.**
He doesn't command. He doesn't demand. He doesn't use her. He simply speaks to her:
> *"You're not a slave. You're not a god. You're just a person. You don't have to serve anyone. You can choose."*
And then—this is what breaks me every time—**he hugs her.**
This child who has never been shown genuine affection. This girl who was used, abused, and discarded by everyone who ever had power over her. This god who was never allowed to be human.
Eren holds her. Not to take something from her. Just to acknowledge her existence. Her humanity. Her right to be something other than a tool.
> *"You've been waiting, haven't you? For 2,000 years. For someone."*
Ymir cries. For the first time in 2,000 years, she shows emotion. Her dead eyes come alive with tears.
And then she chooses.
She doesn't choose Zeke's plan of sterilization. She doesn't choose to end the curse quietly. She chooses Eren's freedom—**violent, destructive, all-consuming freedom.** She lends him her full power, and together they initiate the Rumbling.
## The Prophetic Structure
Here's where Attack on Titan transcends typical storytelling and becomes something prophetic.
The first chapter of the manga is titled: **"To You, 2,000 Years From Now."**
Chapter 122—the chapter where Eren frees Ymir—is titled: **"From You, 2,000 Years Ago."**
These titles form a closed loop. A message sent across time. A conversation between two people separated by two millennia but connected through the Paths.
**Ymir, 2,000 years ago, sent a message forward through time: "To you."**
**Eren, receiving that message, responds: "From you."**
The entire story of Attack on Titan is framed as this exchange. Every chapter, every battle, every death—all of it exists within the conversation between a enslaved god and the person who would eventually free her.
The first chapter begins with Eren waking from a dream, crying, telling Mikasa that he feels like he's been having a very long dream. **He was experiencing echoes of the Paths—glimpses of the 2,000-year history that led to him.**
In other words: the ending was encoded in the beginning. The liberation of Ymir was prophesied in the first pages of the story. Everything that happened—the fall of Wall Maria, the discovery of Titans' true nature, Eren's transformation, the revelation of Marley, the attack on Liberio—all of it was the path toward this single moment.
**Ymir waited 2,000 years. And she sent her message through time to ensure that Eren would come.**
## Why It Had to Be Eren
Why couldn't anyone else free Ymir? Why did it have to be this specific person?
Because Eren is the only person in the entire lineage of Titan inheritors who understood freedom the way Ymir needed it understood.
Not freedom as a political concept. Not freedom as the absence of conflict. **Freedom as the fundamental right to exist on your own terms.**
Eren's entire character is built around an almost irrational commitment to freedom. From childhood, he hated the walls—not because they were walls, but because they represented limitation. He hated the Titans not because they killed his mother, but because they represented the forces that cage humanity.
When he finally reaches the ocean—the dream that drove him through years of warfare—he doesn't feel free. Because across that ocean are more people who want to enslave and destroy his people. Freedom, for Eren, can never be conditional. It can never be negotiated. **It must be absolute.**
This extreme philosophy—which makes Eren a monster in many ways—is exactly what Ymir needed.
Everyone else who accessed the Founding Titan tried to **use** her. The royal bloodline commanded her. Zeke tried to manipulate her toward his euthanasia plan. Even well-intentioned people saw her as a means to an end.
**Eren saw her as a person with the right to choose.**
He didn't come to the Paths with a plan for what Ymir should do. He came to tell her that she could choose *anything*—including things that horrified him. The Rumbling wasn't his first choice. But it was Ymir's choice, and he respected that more than his own preferences.
This is the paradox of Eren Yeager: his absolute commitment to freedom makes him capable of liberating a god, but it also makes him capable of destroying the world. Both outcomes flow from the same philosophy.
## The Parallel to Master Chief
In our article on [The Anomaly: Why Master Chief's Luck Is the Most Important Part of Halo Lore](https://proscris.com/blog), we explored how John-117's "luck" isn't random—it's the result of a 100,000-year genetic engineering program by the Forerunner Librarian.
**The parallels to Eren are striking.**
Both characters are products of plans that span thousands of years:
- Master Chief was engineered by the Librarian to be the culmination of 100,000 years of genetic manipulation
- Eren was guided by Ymir (consciously or unconsciously) through 2,000 years of Attack Titan memory transmission
Both carry a form of "destiny" that isn't supernatural but mechanical:
- Chief's luck is the activation of Forerunner geas—genetic programming that influences probability
- Eren's path is determined by the Attack Titan's ability to send memories backward, creating a fixed timeline
Both are "chosen ones" who aren't chosen by gods in the traditional sense:
- Chief was chosen by Cortana because she computed his probability anomaly
- Eren was chosen by Ymir because he was the first person to see her as human
And both face the burden of being necessary:
- Chief must survive because the Librarian's plan requires him to survive
- Eren must free Ymir because the loop requires him to free Ymir
The key difference is agency. Master Chief operates within his programming somewhat unconsciously—he doesn't know the Librarian engineered him. Eren, by contrast, **sees the entire timeline** through the Attack Titan's memories. He knows exactly what he's going to do, knows the cost, and does it anyway because **that's who he is.**
Both represent a profound question: If your destiny was engineered, if your path was determined before you were born, are you truly free? Or are you just executing code written by something greater than yourself?
Eren's answer is the same as Master Chief's, even if they express it differently: **It doesn't matter.** The path is who they are. The choices, even if predetermined, are *their* choices. They would make them again. That's what makes them who they are.
## The Theology of Liberation
Let's talk about what this scene actually means on a deeper level.
Ymir Fritz is functionally a god. She is the source of all Titan power. Every supernatural ability in the Attack on Titan world flows from her. She could destroy or remake civilization with a thought.
**But she was a slave.**
A god who doesn't know she's free is indistinguishable from a slave. Power without agency is just service with more steps. Ymir had infinite capability and zero autonomy—the worst possible combination.
Eren's act of liberation isn't just freeing a person. It's **absolving a god of her suffering.**
Think about the theological implications. If God exists and is all-powerful, why does God permit suffering? This is the classic Problem of Evil. Attack on Titan offers a devastating answer: **Maybe God is suffering too.**
Maybe the source of existence is itself enslaved—trapped by expectations, demands, and the weight of endless service. Maybe the first being is also the most imprisoned being. Maybe power and freedom are not synonymous.
Eren doesn't worship Ymir. He doesn't fear her. He doesn't try to manipulate her. He treats her as what she is: **a person who has been abused for so long that she forgot she could be anything else.**
And in that recognition—in that simple act of seeing her humanity—he does something no prayer, no ritual, no sacrifice ever could.
**He reminds God that God has the right to choose.**
## The Weight of the Scene
When I watch this scene, several things hit me:
**The silence.** Ymir hasn't spoken in 2,000 years. She doesn't speak when Eren hugs her. But her tears speak. Her choice speaks. After two millennia of mute obedience, her first act of communication is emotion.
**The contrast.** Zeke screaming "You are a slave!" while Eren whispers "You are a person." The royal bloodline always commanded. The outsider offered recognition.
**The consequence.** Ymir's choice leads to the Rumbling—the death of 80% of humanity. Freedom isn't clean. Liberation isn't safe. Eren freed Ymir knowing that her freedom would destroy the world. He did it anyway because he believed her right to choose mattered more than safety.
**The tragedy.** Even in choosing, Ymir chooses destruction. 2,000 years of abuse have shaped her so completely that her first free act is apocalyptic. This isn't a happy ending. It's the consequence of what was done to her.
And finally, **the prophecy fulfilled.** Two millennia of waiting. A message sent through time. A loop closed. "From you, 2,000 years ago" meeting "To you, 2,000 years from now."
**She was always waiting for him. He was always coming for her. And the universe arranged itself to ensure their meeting.**
## The Final Reflection
Attack on Titan is many things—a story about war, about cycles of violence, about the costs of freedom. But at its core, it's a story about a girl who was never taught she had value, and the boy who crossed 2,000 years to tell her she did.
Eren Yeager is not a hero. He commits genocide. He destroys most of humanity. He causes suffering on a scale that's almost incomprehensible.
But he also did something no one else in 2,000 years thought to do:
**He hugged a lonely god and told her she mattered.**
Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes a single moment of genuine recognition outweighs millennia of servitude. Sometimes the most powerful act isn't destruction or creation—it's simply seeing someone who has been invisible.
Ymir chose Eren. Not because his plan was better. Not because she agreed with his methods. **Because he was the first person to ever offer her a choice.**
That's the prophetic weight of the scene. That's why it resonates beyond the context of anime or manga. It speaks to something fundamental about suffering, freedom, and the power of being seen.
For 2,000 years, a god built Titans in silence.
Then someone came and said: "You don't have to."
And everything changed.
***
### The 2,000-Year Timeline:
| Era | Event | Significance |
|-----|-------|--------------|
| **~2,000 years ago** | Ymir gains
