Okay, but this is like one of the most important bits of this chapter.

Rod Reiss didn’t tell anyone about Frieda and his other children dying. He covered up the loss of the coordinate. Nobody knew the coordinate had been lost until the Trost battle.

!!!

Solid information, at last, about something somebody knew.

I’ve written volumes speculating about the political underpinnings of everything that’s been going on, and the fact that none of the nobles knew about the loss of the coordinate or the Reiss children changes everything. Well, okay, not everything, but it gives a very different slant to the whole situation.

It explains, for one thing, why the nobles were okay with killing Historia at that point, given that the Reisses are said to be the only bloodline with memory control powers. I had wondered:

If only the Reisses can wipe memories, then trying to kill Historia was very irrational on the nobles’ part. Surely, in an environment where so few Reisses are left, every one of them is precious?

Now it make sense: they didn’t realize that Historia was the last in the royal line.

So the timeline seems to be: Rod fools around with a servant, Historia is born, and Rod’s fellow nobles / government people know about this fact. Everyone disapproves. However, the nobles grudgingly let Historia live as long as Rod doesn’t acknowledge her, and Rod has no interest in doing that, so all is relatively well. Still, I’m thinking the nobles keep an eye on Historia just in case Rod or Historia’s mother or Historia herself gets ideas. And then that exact thing happens: post-Grisha, Rod approaches Historia and Historia’s mom. The CMP, who have been warned to watch out for this kind of foolishness, nip the whole thing in the bud and twist Rod’s arm to solve the problem of Historia–send her away and pretend she never existed.

Rod goes along with this, because his only other option is to confess that his family is dead and the coordinate has been stolen.

As such, the timing of Historia’s mother’s murder was due to Rod’s actions and not anything else plot-related. Rod chose that time to approach them, so the CMP acted then, end of story. Had Rod not made his move, Historia & mom wouldn’t have lived happily ever after because they weren’t happy in the first place, but one of them might still have been alive and the other might never have joined the military. Who knows.

So Rod is living with a sword over his head, knowing that his fellow nobles might discover at any moment that he doesn’t have the coordinate and his power is greatly diminished therefore. Somehow he manages to sustain the lie (being in hiding helps, I guess, there’s no way he’d conceal this from the palace). It’s a good question how he manages to spin the situation in the cleanup of the Wall Maria breach; surely, that was a good time for the coordinate to act? But maybe he claimed Frieda’s youth and inexperience and told everyone to suck it up while she matures. Excuses, excuses. Rod is good at them.

He runs out of excuses at Trost, though, because humanity at large finds out about the existence of titan shifters and the nobles need to cover this shit up, damn it. And Rod really, really can’t. No Frieda, no coordinate. The king is naked, etc.

From then on, presumably, looking for the coordinate becomes a big deal to everyone involved.

How do they explain Eren to themselves? Do the government types immediately suspect that Eren has the coordinate? I guess a lot of this would depend on what they know about titan shifters and how common titan shifting is. For all we know, initially they peg him as one of the warrior village spies instead… But, either way, if Rod doesn’t suspect Eren of having the coordinate latest starting with this, I’d be astonished. Eren is Grisha’s son, how hard is that to figure out?

I’ve once written a meta piece on the ways in which Rod and Grisha may or may not have known each other, and I’m not going to rehash this whole thing here, since it would take forever. But, cutting the story short, I guess I can accept some degree of ignorance on Rod’s part. If Eren’s appearance is a complete surprise to Rod, maybe Rod knew Grisha under a different identity and didn’t immediately link “Eren Jaeger” with “bearded shifter of doom”. I can believe that much. But to believe that this ignorance can last long past Eren’s titan reveal is… well. It is possible, but it seems strange. The whole thing about a key and a basement and a mysteriously knowledgeable parent should have thrown up flags and had people look into Grisha Jaeger. Surely. And, once Rod knew whose son Eren was, he had to have an inkling as to where the coordinate might be.

In other news, it is at this point that RBA begin to suspect that Eren might have the coordinate. They’re not sure, but they’re thinking it might be so. This could very well be due to the fact that they’ve spied around, heard government people talking about the coordinate being lost, and connected the dots. I’ve aired a conspiracy theory questioning their timing–they don’t want to abscond with Eren when he appears in Trost, but then suddenly make him a huge priority after his trial–but this would explain it. If they, along with the others, never knew the coordinate was missing, they would have no reason to suspect Eren of having it. Afterwards, though, they may have heard and acted on the new knowledge.

Again: interesting.

In an earlier meta post, I pointed out that it’s only when Historia’s identity is publicly revealed that the CMP start trying to bring her back to Rod. This is true, but it also happens at the exact same time as Eren is definitively revealed as the coordinate. So, in light of everything, chances are it’s Eren who is the key factor here. Rod is keeping a casual eye on Historia, staying away as per his agreement with the nobles, and then he finally finds the coordinate! And so now is the time for him to bring Historia out of hiding, so he sends Kenny after her. The nobles, by this point, either don’t know about this (unlikely) or they are aware that Historia is the last Reiss heir and agree to everything as long as the coordinate is reclaimed.

Things making sense! Yay. Most things in this plot are still, obviously, giant question marks, but I’m glad to have at least something cleared up.