Clarifying the Eren and Historia Parentage Situation in Attack on Titan
There is a common misconception floating around the fanbase about whether Eren Yeager and Historia Reiss ended up having a child together. The short answer is no, they did not. Let me walk through what actually happens because the manga and anime do a decent job of explaining it if you pay attention. Historia marries Eren temporarily as part of a political maneuver to protect the royal bloodline. Rod Reiss had orchestrated this arrangement so that Eren's children would carry both the Yeager and Titan royal blood, essentially creating a backdoor to reclaim power. Historia, however, rejects that entire plan. She steals away from the wedding and leaves behind a false pregnancy announcement to throw people off the trail. Instead, she raises a young boy she adopts, who is later revealed to be the child of Nile Dolk, a former military officer who was executed by the military government for opposing Eren's actions. The kid Historia raises as her own is referred to simply as "Son of Zeke" in some promotional material, but that is inaccurate. Nile Dolk is his biological father, and Historia raises him without revealing his true parentage to the public. Years later in the epilogue, we see Historia and this boy living on a farm outside the walls, and the boy has clearly inherited traits from both parents. There is no indication he is Eren's biological child.
I've seen a lot of debates about this online, and honestly, the confusion stems partly from the fact that the series never explicitly states Nile is the father of Historia's child in the anime adaptation. The manga does make it clear through supplementary material, but the anime left that gap. I ran into this exact problem when trying to explain the timeline to someone who had only watched the show, and the workaround was simply pointing them to the final chapter of the manga where the epilogue is shown alongside the explicit mention of Nile's lineage. One thing people tend to overlook is the distinction between the political marriage and any actual romantic or reproductive relationship. Eren and Historia had a complicated history, sure, but by the time they are "married," Eren is already fully committed to his endgame and they never actually share an intimate relationship. Historia herself makes it clear that she chose to marry Eren for practical reasons, not emotional ones, and she quickly moves on from that arrangement once the plan falls apart.
