The Azumabito Clan
Sooo now that the manga is over, what was their deal? A theory and explanation for "what their whole point was supposed to be" under the cut
Given how Isayama embues almost everything in SNK with thematic meaning, it's unusual that the Azumabito's "ultimate role in the final arc" didn't have a bigger payoff.
In my opinion, the Azumabito were meant to be taken at face value, to a certain degree. We are supposed to accept that the explanation for the Azumabitos is exactly what Isayama says it is: they're Hizuru's royal family, one heir became friends with King Karl Fritz and got left behind on Paradis.
That being said, I do think there's are deeper thematic meanings for the individual Azumabitos, but not for the clan. Like:
Mikasa: She's an Azumabito descendant whose demonstration of love for Eren is what gets through to Ymir. The Azumabito heir being friends with King Fritz foreshadows this. But this doesn't speak to "what it means to be Azumabito or what Azumabito means." It was just kind of a plot point that had 2 purposes:
1) Explain why there are so few Asians on the island
2) Foreshadow that an Azumabito would be able to connect with a Fritz. But it's not a 1-1 parallel because while Ymir is a Fritz by marriage, the shogun's son was friends with a Fritz who was still ordering Ymir around, not someone who felt that Ymir was a sympathetic person who shouldn't be enslaved.
Kiyomi: She initially was greedy and planned to secure Hizuru's position and also profit off Paradis. I think it added a level of genuine danger for the islanders; the first nation other than Marley defectors that they encounter openly want to exploit them. Everything they've seen of the world is either hostile or nice but with strings attached.
But unless I'm remembering incorrectly, this danger was due to Kiyomi's own views, not because all the other Azumabito wanted to attack the Paradis folks. The others were all embarrassed that Kiyomi was drooling over money and then helped the alliance with their engineering skills. You could argue that the deeper symbolism here is that the views of the leader affect the policy of the nation: Kiyomi's own greediness meant that Hizuru's agenda was to mine and profit off the Paradisians. But again, that's a statement about nations in general, not about the Azumabito clan in particular, or why they matter to the overall themes of SNK. The Azumabito clan doesn't have a pivotal role in the ending; Kiyomi does, because she moves from selfishness to regret and caring about the rest of the world, and Mikasa does, obviously, but the Azumabito clan does not have a larger meaning.
TLDR: Azumabito was a plot point to explain why there are so little Asians and also foreshadow that Mikasa would be the one to prompt Ymir to remove the titans. Feel free to disagree, I'm curious what others think (but be gentle, I just finished sobbing for 45 min straight over Chapter 139)
