Ymir and Historia: A story of star-crossed lovers
star-crossed lovers: lovers whose relationship is doomed to fail are said to be “star-crossed” (frustrated by the stars), because those who believe in astrology claim that the stars control human destiny. William Shakespeare used the phrase to describe the lovers in Romeo and Juliet.
One of the few ships that I actually enjoy in AOT is the yumihisu one. Maybe I can attribute this bias of mine to the fact that my gay heart is already predisposed to loving sapphic media and relationships (and live in bitter resignation to the fact that it occupies such a small niche in fiction). But even beyond that, yumihisu is a very dear ship to me. And no, I’m not going to spend my time in this piece arguing about whether yumihisu is canon — it should be a fairly easy thing to piece together if you didn’t need it to be literally spoonfed into your mouth like a toddler (this is a sizeable chunk of the fandom by the way, many of whom insist that Ymir and Historia are not romantically interested in each other because of…reasons). Instead, I want to focus on what makes their relationship so special to me, so tragic, and so beautiful.
I titled this piece after one famous line of Shakespeare’s in the opening prologue of Romeo and Juliet in which he describes the pair as star-crossed lovers — lovers whose hearts, which may link them together, their destinies rip violently apart.
And isn’t that an apt description of Ymir and Historia’s romance? The type that leaves your gut wrenching and your heart smothered in regret by what could have been?
By now, I’m sure the fandom knows how much Isayama loves to create powerful character dynamics and duos in order to drive the story forward or make a thematically-relevant message. In Ymir and Historia’s case, Isayama sets them up as foils of each other. Character foils are characters which are set up to be starkly different from one another (with opposing or conflicting traits and motivations).
When Ymir makes her first appearance, she is depicted as a very selfish and callous person. She makes crude remarks at the expense of her fellow cadets like when she scolded Sasha for being overly polite or when she made a sex joke about Connie’s parents (much to his annoyance). Though Ymir appears abrasive and selfish at first, we come to learn that she’s actually one of the most selfless cadets and characters in the show. She scolds Sasha not to be cruel, but to allow her to grow as a person and become friendlier with everyone at the camp. She makes that sex joke in order to take Connie’s mind off of things (as Reiner pointed out later in the episode when he thanked her for it). Tangent here — Reiner and Ymir honestly understood each other real well and I wish we had seen more moments of them together.
So, despite her selfish appearance, Ymir was in actuality one of the most selfless of all the characters.
Historia, on the other hand, tells a completely different tale. She takes on the mantle of a selfless character but is in fact, as we learn later on, the “worst girl who ever lived.” That is, she’s quite a selfish character — which is a refreshing character trait (especially in anime/manga where young women are often expected to be paragons of virtue) that departs heavily from the way Historia set herself up to be as Krista !
When we first meet Historia (well, actually Krista) she’s the prized trophy of the camp. Shining bright, smiling wide, and seflessly giving herself over to whatever her fellow cadets needed (bread in the case of Sasha after Shadis takes her dinner privileges away, horses for Jean, Armin, and Reiner during the expedition arc). Her supposed selfless nature even gets her called a Goddess by the cadets on multiple occassions (when we know that that’s actually more Ymir’s territory lol). And again, as the story develops we learn that her benevolence is just an act she carefully constructed over the years in order to curry the favor of others.
Despite the dissimilar natures of Ymir and Historia, it was these exact conflicting traits that drew them together and which made them fall in love with one another.
But it was for these exact reasons that they also come to fall apart (yes, this is where the star-crossed lovers definition finally becomes relevant!). Their natures, which shaped their respective destinies and brought them together, are also what pull them apart. Ymir, like the selfless Goddess whose name she shares, decides to be Bertholdt’s and Reiner’s sacrifical lamb in order to save them from the cruel fate they would have met had they gone back to Marley empty-handed. In turn, she was able to repay them for giving her another chance at life and reincarnation — one that she was able to spend next to Historia.
