Since ascending to the throne, Queen Historia seems to have led a very modest lifestyle, preferring to run an orphanage in the countryside than sitting on some gilded chair in a stuffy hall. The people call her the “Cattle-Farming Goddess”, and it’s not at all meant as an insult.
Also, as both she and Eren continue to adjust to their new roles they are spending a lot of time together, side-by-side, and some of that time they are engaged in what some could call flirting, and I am THERE for it. I am also there for Mikasa shutting such instances down with a glare for the ages.
Speaking of glares, all of the scouts we’ve followed realize how much they’ve been through in the last few months, and how they’re no longer newbies or rookies or greenhorns. They are veterans, and their ‘resting grave faces’ practically scream “we’ve been through some shit” to their “juniors” in the 104th who relatively speaking haven’t seen much action. They certainly haven’t seen their former comrades and friends turn into Titans.
But whatever shit they’ve been through pales compared to Eren, who has been through some truly existential, philosophical shit. As Jean remarks, he’s always off in the corner muttering weird shit to himself, like whether those who are Titans are merely being tormented by some kind of nightmare (Ymir’s word for it) that takes a terrifying physical form.
However, thanks to the flashes he’s been getting, he now knows who to talk to next about his father: no less than the cadet corps commandant (i.e. hardass drill sergeant) Keith Sadies. He, Levi, and the other scouts in their circle return to where their training began. Keith can tell how much they’ve been through, and how they’re no longer the maggots who crawled into his camp not too long ago.
Still, he doesn’t know how helpful he can be to Eren & Co., other than telling them the story of how he first met Grisha Yeager twenty years ago, at the gates of Shiganshina, dazed confused, and lacking memories of how he got outside the wall.
Grisha eventually remembers he is a doctor, and starts serving the people of the district in that role curing them of plague and other maladies—including the bar waitress Carla, in whom Keith seemed interested, but who would later become Grisha’s wife and give birth to Eren.
Keith also distinguished himself, rising to Scout Regiment commander (Erwin’s predecessor). He was well-suited for scouting, as life inside the walls always felt too cramped for him. But he also could sense that he wasn’t “special” enough to do much with his position or his life outside the walls, something all but confirmed when he led an assault on the Titans that ended in defeat and an embarrassing retreat that harmed the Scouts’ reputation with the people.
By the time he returns from this defeat, he, Grisha, and Carla, once so close, had drifted far apart, and Carla had little Eren. Carla and her husband worry about Keith and when his next mission will kill him, but Keith angrily tells her that he’s not like the other multitudes of people within the walls, utterly lacking imagination and unashamed of living “useless” lives producing “nothing but shit.”
It’s perhaps too harsh a diatribe to subject to a mother holding her young child, but considering what he just returned from, his rage and exasperation were understandable.
By the time the Colossal and Armored Titans breach the wall at Shiganshina, Keith had already stepped down as Commander. Lacking that “special” quality he felt to be absolutely essential, Keith felt he had accomplished nothing, because that’s all normal people can do. All he could hope for was to be a “bystander,” not a leader or agent of change. He joined the flow of those he once despised, feeling he had no other choice.
Hange is disgusted by what she sees as nothing but puerile self-pity on Keith’s part…but being pretty damn special herself, she can’t really ever relate to how he felt in the past when he gave up his title, or how he feels now.
In the aftermath of Shiganshina, he and Grisha crossed paths once more, but not for long. Rather than avenge Carla as Keith suspected he would, Grisha took Eren away and fashioned him into his instrument of vengeance.
The utter hatred for and desire to kill all Titans that Eren possesses at the very beginning of the series was instilled not only by what he witnessed, but also at the urging of his father. And Keith was the one to find him unconscious in the woods, with Grisha, who’d likely injected him with the power of the Titan earlier, nowhere to be found.
Eren too has also come to believe he’s not special either, merely the son of someone special. He was chosen, sure, but by that father. Everything he is and does, he became because of that father’s choices.
It’s a somewhat narrow view that ignores the fact he had to make his own choices along the way, but never mind; his mother Carla never cared whether his son was “special” or “normal”; instead, she felt it was special enough simply to be alive, and to be able to survive.
Out of worry for his ultimate well-being, Keith worked hard to keep Eren from getting into the Scout Regiment. But Eren was able to overcome everything he threw at him, including sabotage to his ODM training gear. But it wasn’t that Keith Sadies couldn’t do anything because he was’t special; it was because he was Keith Sadies.
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