Quote Originally Posted by Kato View Post
I'm with the Eldian skeptics on this.. You don't slaughter a hundred soldiers if you want to ally with them. Zeke is full of...
Or at least I would be, if I was more confident in the writing. Eh, it's fine.

I guess Paradis gets a three year tech revolution and then Eren decides "to hell with it"? How could they ever let him get into Marley in the first place?
People process war in different ways. That is why it is war, both in how wars start and why wars continue until they stop. There is no meeting of the minds with war so violence is done in order to enforce your sovereignty, your space, your will, etc.

People can change, of course when they change there is a triggering event / feeling / sentiment and we do not know what that event / feeling / sentiment is but just because we do not see it does not mean it does not exist. (Especially since Attack on Titan loves its mystery-box, a mystery-box that only makes sense with new information or with a flashback to an event we did not see earlier.)

So Zeke may be authentic, or it may be a trap, we do not know all we have is subjective gut feelings. But there are many reasons why Zeke may change. Knowing you have 4 years or life left (now how many months left after the time skip) until your demise does cause people to organize towards reality in different ways. Some people when death is on the horizon think about legacy. Other humans think about other things, people are different that is the one true universal with humans.