Player
Name: Rakel
E-mail: ashenpaw at gmail dot com
Preferred Contact: PM via Dreamwidth
Timezone: PST/GMT-8/-7
Current Characters in Victory Road: N/A

Character
Name: Annie Leonhart
Series: Attack on Titan
Timeline: Chapter 33
Canon Resource Links:
Wikia: http://attackontitan.wikia.com/wiki/Attack_on_Titan_Wiki
Annie's Wikia: http://attackontitan.wikia.com/wiki/Annie_Leonhart_(Anime)

In looking over these pages, I want to note that this seems to be sourcing back to the anime, particularly past season one, and I'm referencing the manga for this application. Side materials by different authors focused on Annie that I'm not referencing include:

Lost Girls: http://attackontitan.wikia.com/wiki/Attack_on_Titan:_Lost_Girls_(Novel)
Wall Sina, Goodbye: http://attackontitan.wikia.com/wiki/Wall_Sina,_Goodbye_(Visual_Novel)

Personality:

From first introduction, Annie Leonhart appears to be a reserved young woman who is an accomplished soldier, making top ranks in her graduating class. Over the course of the series, we learn how she has come to craft a facade of indifference to keep her peers at a distance in order to focus on the demands of her mission within the Walls. We also see how this facade slips, and how Annie is unable to remain isolated from the people and events around her. We see that she is a young woman who experiences a range of emotions, from pleasure and sadness to surprise and anger. We see her act on the behalf of her peers even while endangering herself as a consequence. We see her actively engage the people around her in conversation while at other times we see her ignore their attempts to bait her into reacting. We see her making logical arguments from her point of view, only to make illogical decisions based on her emotional ties to her peers. We see her react emotionally and viscerally to the people and events around her. Her basic desire to connect with other people overrides the instructions of her father and her own self-preservation instincts, ultimately leading to her exposure as an infiltrating agent within the Human Empire.

When examining Annie’s personality, it’s important to take into consideration her life circumstances and her relationship with the world we find her in. Annie is a foreign spy seeking to navigate the military and social structure of the Human Empire. To complete the mission she’s on, she has to be able to succeed at passing within that society without outing herself before her end objective is achieved. In order for her to succeed at this, she must build a metaphorical wall between herself and others. As a consequence, Annie wants others to believe the superficial presentation of her as a cold, aloof, and disinterested young woman is the entirety of her personality. By keeping herself apart from others, she aimed to minimize the potential bonds she’d make with her peers. It allows her to focus on achieving what she must in order to proceed with her mission. It’s also a mask that slips over time, a defense mechanism that fails.

While Annie doesn’t attempt to be all that socially outgoing, she also doesn’t seek to isolate herself away. Annie remains aware of her situation and surroundings even while not directly engaging, and she keeps tabs on the people around her. Annie also makes deliberate choices to engage her peers in conversation, both in posing questions of her own and responding to questions or statements directed her way. As part of her role as an infiltrating agent, Annie pays keen attention to the comings and goings of those around her. She moves through her peers and her surroundings, observing and taking in details, information, and social interplay the whole time. She takes information in, disseminates it, and then redistributes that information only on demand or when it’s important to do so. Her biggest tools are logic, patience, knowledge of her own capabilities, and the element of surprise. That said, she most often uses logic as a tool when bluntly interfacing with her peers, and most fails to use logic as a tool when making emotion-based decisions such as the ones that spare the lives of those same people.

Perhaps the most striking example of Annie’s use of logical argument, along with her valuing the opinions of at least a few of her peers, can be seen when she’s approached by Armin in the Stohess District. While Armin repeatedly tries to convince her to assist in sneaking Eren outside of Wall Sina, she refuses to take the bait. Each point Armin brings up, Annie refutes, asking for more information as his claims are ones that aren’t sensible given the structure of the world in the Walls. Armin’s continuing pleas for her to help only prompts her to ask, “Do I… Do I really look like such a good person to you?” His response at that point is what convinces Annie to go along with his plan in spite of her all but walking away beforehand:

“... A good person, huh... Well, I... I don't really like this way of putting it. Because, you know, I feel like these words are simply what people use to call those who are convenient to them. And no one can be convenient to all. You may be useful to some people, but at the same time a bad person to others… That's why, Annie, if you don't help us now, to me, you will turn into a bad person.”

The value of his temporary good regard is enough to change Annie’s mind in spite of the logical inconsistencies with his arguments. This is further driven home when she’s confronted with the accusation of being the Female Titan, where she says, “Armin... aren't you lucky that I was such a good person... to you.” She’s built connections with her peers in spite of herself, and goes against her own better interests in order to better help them when she can - by following them into an ambush, or in sparing their lives on the battlefield.

Looking closely at canon, we can even see Annie’s peers calling her out on who she is beyond her defense mechanisms. Eren believes she's a shitty liar about the things that matter to her (like her father's martial arts training), Hitch believes she's afraid to interact with others, Armin believes she's kind at heart (in the sense that she actually cares about people around her). Her own actions over the course of canon back up these opinions from her peers. For example, someone entirely aloof and uncaring about those around her would not be the person moving to help another unasked at a danger to herself, yet Annie does this in Trost for Connie. Her actions are surprising enough that Reiner actually expresses gratitude that she's alright. We see her horrified in the aftermath of Trost and apologising to the dead, pleased with Eren's enthusiasm over her father's techniques, crying when she fails to capture Eren as a Titan, and when she fails to get away. We've seen her dry, subtle wit, particularly with Eren, who doesn’t seem to pick up on when she’s playing with words and meanings during hand-to-hand combat. We’ve seen her annoyed by Jean’s mouthing off. We’ve seen her provoke Mikasa verbally after Mikasa challenges her to a fight. We’ve seen Annie break down in tears. We’ve seen her break into a manic smile when she's backed into a corner and knows it. Annie sabotages her own ability to complete her mission because she can’t be the person who, per her father’s advice, can “treat the whole world as your enemy.”

What about Annie and her relationship with fighting? She’s a gifted fighter who doesn’t choose to pick fights, and doesn’t choose to create conflict or challenge people. The only exception to this rule is Eren, as her relationship with Eren evolves to where she’s instructing him in how to improve in his fighting abilities and guiding the development of his strength. She occasionally chooses to respond when she’s challenged, but she isn’t the initiator. Annie tends to act in self-protection, not strong arming her way through events (brute strength isn’t her forte), but applying her knowledge and skills to pull through. The only time we see Annie being proactive and bringing a fight to people instead of letting them bring it to her deals with her first appearance in canon as the Female Titan. Even then, she doesn’t go out of her way to hunt down every soldier she comes across, instead limiting her attention to those who are directly challenging her, and efficiently dealing with any who aren’t her peers. Her peers, pointedly, she lets live, Armin being the most blatant example, but not the only one. She’s a focused fighter: deliberate in action, and not a conflict loving junkie. For her to get riled up, she needs to have some investment in what’s being said, or have someone get under her skin on a subject that’s close to her heart (or goals).

Her position among the top ten graduates of her class is also a measure of her dedication and capability, where her drive is specifically directed at qualifying for joining the Military Police. Annie applies her energy into the the point graded training categories (Logistics Progression, Horse Riding, Strategy Courses, and Craftmanship), earning fourth place in the top ten of the 104th Southern Trainees Corp. By the time she graduated, Annie's training in the military was a primary influence on her initial reactions in new situations. While she is always aware of her ultimate mission, she's spent years being trained to respond as a soldier to the events and occurrences within the Walls. Keeping in mind that as her instructor stated, "Solidarity doesn't come easily to her," teamwork is a skill she had to learn and develop to be functional within the military's structure. She demonstrates an ability to work intuitively with her fellow soldiers, moves forward cooperatively with the group, and behaves as expected or beyond expectation within that group. For example, when Mikasa first rallies the former Trainees to rush the Trost Headquarters to attempt to refill their gas tanks, Jean follows Mikasa's speech with a much more pointed one to get everyone moving, and Annie is among the first to go into motion.

In conclusion, Annie is a dedicated, hard working, generally reserved person who has held herself at a distance from her peers in order to work toward completing her mission within the Walls of the Human Empire. She's a complicated person who cares about people in the world around her in spite of the efforts she makes to stay aloof and separate from her peers. She's a trained fighter with an instinct and appreciation for the skills her father gave her who doesn't seek out or instigate fights on her own. Overall, Annie is a young woman who reflects what we know of her circumstances, and who has been influenced and reacts to the situation and people she's lived with since her infiltration of a foreign society at age eleven.

Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer.
Starter: Absol.
Password: Atomic Fireball.

Samples
RP Sample: Network RP Sample, TDM

Victory Road Sample: Action Victory Road Sample, TDM