Jean
Kirschtein

Jean joined the military to get away from danger, and said so out loud. He wanted the Military Police and a soft life in the interior, and he sneered at Eren for choosing the Scouts. Trost broke that version of him. He led stranded cadets through the city when no one else would take charge, and afterward he found Marco's half-eaten body propped against a wall with no one able to say how he died. Marco had told him he made a good leader precisely because he was weak and knew how the weak feel. Jean joined the Scouts carrying both the words and the corpse.

He became the squad's reluctant backbone, the one who takes command when Armin freezes and says the ugly, practical thing no one wants to hear. He fought the Female Titan with a hood over his face, put a Thunder Spear into the Cart Titan's eye at Liberio, and hesitated a beat before firing at a downed enemy because a child stood in the way. When Sasha died he said plainly that Eren had dragged them all into it. Floch later offered him exactly the life he once wanted, a hero's place in the interior, and Jean walked away from it, because a pile of bones would not leave him alone.

At the execution stand he fired four shots into the dirt to fake Onyankopon's and Yelena's deaths, and at the final battle he was the one holding the detonator. Thrown by Reiner onto the Founding Titan's neck, he called Eren a suicidal blockhead and blew the head off the biggest Titan that ever walked. The centipede's mist turned him into a Titan for the last minutes of the fight; Ymir's release turned him back. Three years later he returned to Paradis as an ambassador for peace.