Eren's Choice: Mikasa And Historia, Between Selflessness And Self

So. Mega EH vibes this chapter.

Eren trusts Historia with a secret he wouldn’t impart to anyone else close to him, because (as I predicted >:3) the moment she chose him over the world left an indelible impression on him.

When Historia realises how important that moment was to him, she begins to look at what he’s told her in a different light.

Why is it that Eren is willing to commit genocide but stands so staunchly against the tragedy of a single family? Why does he accept the former but speaks with such disgust at the latter?

What does Historia mean to Eren that he’d value her fate over that of tens of millions of innocent people?

Realising just how special she might be to him, she asks him a question.

She asks whether there might be another reason Eren doesn’t want her to have a child. The implication being - does he not want anyone else to be the father?

Of course, I’m not suggesting that Eren is committing genocide to avoid being cucked. He is committing genocide to protect Historia - wanting to be with her is secondary to that. And of course, he knows it’s impossible on his time limit to be with anyone in the long term. However, Historia is able to detect romantic desire behind the motivations of his actions: so she asks him this question.

“SHIPPING GOGGLES!” I hear you cry. But what other motivation might she have for asking this? She already knows he doesn’t want her to get pregnant for her own well-being. So why else would she ask?

Most tellingly, this conversation is juxtaposed with the one between Eren and Zeke - a conversation explicitly about romance.

Shipping wars between EM and EH fans are no co-incidence. Isa has been baiting both, as within the narrative Eren has been choosing romantically between them.

Approaching adulthood and the end of his life, Eren finds himself wanting love for the first and last time before he leaves this world - even while knowing he can never have it for long. Eren wants a partner in whom he can have absolute confidence and trust, so he can better decide which path to take. So he has to choose between the two women most loyal to him.

Mikasa’s entire life is built around protecting Eren. Historia chose to save Eren’s life over her own desires and the salvation of the entire world. It’s a tough choice, but his decision to trust Historia over Mikasa came down to a singular moment where Mikasa chose the wrong path.

Although she didn’t mean it, Mikasa’s embarrassed deflection sounded to Eren like a refusal to be his ally in this, and additionally, a refusal to be honest with him.

Historia, on the other hand, is direct and open about whether Eren has romantic interest in her. In this mutual sharing of intimate information, Eren feels he has a true ally, and someone he can trust in a way he cannot trust Mikasa.

So when Zeke talks about romance, it is his conversation with Historia, not Mikasa, that he remembers. She has won the battle of his heart, but he cannot properly be with her. His face reflecting on his dwindling lifespan illustrates the pain of that reality. However, he only needs a night to have a child with her - he’s already made it clear he wouldn’t let anyone else have that privilege.

This goes beyond a choice between two love interests, however. They symbolically represent to him the two different paths he can take in a choice that has plagued him ever since joining the Survey Corps.

He can trust in others, the plan of the Survey Corps as represented by Mikasa, its foremost soldier whose development has led her to become more and more selfless. Or he can trust in himself and his own plan, as represented by Historia, who encouraged Eren to live for his own sake and whose development has led her to prioritise herself.

It’s a testament to the development of these two characters that they now occupy the opposite positions to the ones they had at the start of the series. It’s Mikasa’s words that makes him trust in a decision of his comrades that paid off:

And it’s Historia’s words that make him trust in a decision of his own that paid off:

As Levi said, it’s difficult to know which is the right path. So Eren had to confirm it, one last time. And he found that Mikasa returned his intimacy by closing herself off, whereas Historia returned it with open confidence and, I suspect, intimacy of a more physical variety as well.

That was how he decided he could trust the path of the Self more than the path of Others. It was following Mikasa’s accidental spurning, after all, that Eren gives up on the SC’s cause.

Consequently, he decides to act on his Selfish desires at the expense of all the Others - preserving his island at the expense of the rest of the world.

The path of the Self has no place for the good soldier who, in the end, was even willing to abandon Armin for the greater good. It needs someone who would doggedly never give up on their loved ones like Eren did, greater good be damned.

It needs the worst girl in the world.