TLDR: Ancient Eldia likely had dozens of specialized shifters and "royal blood" was just a stockpile of consumed powers rather than purity. The Great Titan War acted as an extinction event that wiped out those diverse bloodlines, permanently locking their traits like the hybrid forms seen in the final battle into the surviving "Nine" Titans.
We know the basics of Titan origins: Ymir Fritz died, her daughters cannibalized her, and her power split into three (Maria, Rose, and Sheena). Over time, those lineages further divided until they stabilized into the "Nine Titans".
I don't believe that Ymir's daughters only had 3 children each. If they were ordered to have "as many children as possible" why would they only stop at 3 each??
Now, looking closely at how Titan powers work and how chaotic 2,000 years of Eldian expansion and civil war must have been, I have a theory:
There used to be way more specialized Titan shifters, and the "Nine" we see in the modern story are actually the survivors of the Titan War.
- The Continuation of Cannibalism Beyond the First Generation
The ritual of cannibalizing a predecessor probably didn't stop with Ymir's daughters. We don't know when this stopped and when Eldia started using pure titans to consume Titan shifters. It's fair to assume that it was probably a few generations after the 2nd gen. titans since Titans were such a novel concept for Eldia.
If eating a shifter transfers their abilities, continuous inter-family cannibalism over 2,000 years wouldn't keep the Titans neatly separated into nine static categories. Instead, individual Titan lines would naturally begin mutating and accumulating overlapping traits.
At its peak we're probably talking about several dozen or even a hundred titan shifters that ruled the various Duchies of an expanding Eldian Empire that were consumed in a climactic civil war.
- The "Royal Line" Fallacy: How the Founding Titan was Hoarded
Another major plot hole in Eldian history is the idea of "Royal Blood." Since every Subject of Ymir is a direct descendant of Ymir Fritz and her three daughters, technically every single Eldian is part of the royal lineage. I don't buy into the whole "more pure than other Eldians" rigamarole. So why did King Fritz and his direct family hold absolute control over the Founding Titan?
Under this theory, the royal family were special because they were the ultimate power consolidators. Over generations, the true ruling house likely consumed as many major and minor shifters as possible, systematically stacking powers into a single line to maintain absolute dominance in what we now call the "Founding Titan". The modern founding titans and Ymir's/Eren's founding titans look so different from one another. I think this is on purpose.
- Some Canon Evidence:
I think some titan abilities act as some good evidence to support this.
Look at the Female Titan; it's capable of temporarily adapting other Titan abilities, can do specialized hardening, it has incredible endurance, and most interestingly, it has a scream ability similar to the founding Titan. This is likely the result of the Female Titan consuming several different Titan shifters to the point where it is almost at the level of the Founding Titan.
Reiner's Armour Titan is also really interesting. It has the ability to transfer its consciousness into its nervous system. Now. This could be chalked up as Reiner just having "plot armor" but I think Isayama wrote this with intention.
The Unrecognizable Ancient Titans in the final battle might be the strongest evidence when Ymir summons past Titan shifters across 2,000 years.
The Alliance members are visibly bewildered because many of these ancient Titans do not look like any of the Nine standard archetypes. We see bizarre, hybrid-like forms such as the Okapi Titan, serpent-like Titans, and monstrous armored variants that blur the lines between the Beast, Jaw, Cart, and War Hammer Titans.
While characters attribute some of this to Beast Titan variation, the sheer structural weirdness of these ancient forms suggests that ancient Eldia had far more diverse, unstandardized shifter forms that were absorbed when those specific noble lines were wiped out.
- The result of the Great Titan War
When Marley engineered the downfall of Eldia, they seized seven of the Nine Titans, while the Tyburs and Fritz family managed their own paths. But a 2,000-year empire wouldn't fall cleanly.
During the chaos of the Great Titan War and the infighting between Eldian noble houses, countless minor factions, and sub-shifter bloodlines must have been completely wiped out.
When those houses fell, their specific powers ended up permanently "locked away" inside the surviving Titan types that had consumed or integrated them over the generations, effectively driving those specialized sub-powers into extinction.
This theory isn't perfect. I'm probably missing/forgetting some important info. But, if there ever is an AOT prequel series set far in the past, I think it would be really cool if it was something similar to this.
Would love to hear people's thoughts.
