Dark Souls lore thread #6

Where is your source for it coming from the sky? I haven't heard that before.

we already know who made the Profaned Flame from a source in the previous games

The fire that came from the sky is seperate from the Profaned Flame, if we assume things haven't been mistranslated.

Profaned Flame description:
>Pyromancy deriving from the Profaned Flame.
>Engulfs foes at range and burns them to ashes.
>The Profaned Capital was consumed by fire after Yhorm the Giant became a Lord of Cinder. The fire, born of the sky, is said to have incinerated naught but human flesh.

Then again, I thought Yhorm became a lord of cinder to put the Profaned Flame to rest.

>Those Darkwraiths in the swamp are supposed to be on their way to try and kill the Abyss Watchers themselves right?
Yeah that seems to be the implication. They serve Kaathe and the Abyss, so it makes sense that they'd want it to be free.
>Also, the demon on top of the bridge, above the wolf, is a very sad guy.
Yeah, doing nothing wrong, sickly and dying, holding his post as guardian of the gate long after the bridge was torn apart by the earth shifting and sending Lothric to the top of a mountain, protecting the failing royal family even after everyone stopped caring about him. And then you murder him in cold blood for a ring, or the ability to spit rocks.

Seems more likely to be an evolution of humanity/the Abyss. Dregs are a counterpart to Embers, a remnant of what Humanity once was. Probably what happens to Humanity if left to fester for long enough, while kept contained just enough to prevent another Oolacile.

darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com/Profaned Flame
>The Profaned Capital was consumed by fire after Yhorm the Giant became a Lord of Cinder. The fire, born of the sky, is said to have incinerated naught but human flesh.

Seems kinda reaching, imo. Yeah it's possible, but it just rests on an implied parallel between the Witch of Izalith and the Lost Sinner, it's a little flimsy.

He did, AFTER the Profaned Flame started burning his home, but BEFORE it fully incinerated everyone.

I've posted my theory for it a couple of times.

You people have probably already discussed this to death, but I haven't been to these threads before so I'll throw in my little two cents on the Rosaria situation that I've been thinking about

All of Leonhard's gear describes his dedication to "the goddess," most obviously implied to be Rosaria
But it doesn't specifically mention her by name
His sickle, however, says it's imbued with the power of the moon and that he received it for pledging his service to "the goddess"

Given that none of the items you get from Rosaria have any moon relation whatsoever, I would have to say it's more likely Leonhard pledged himself to Gwyndolin at some point and got from her the task to save Rosaria, whether Rosaria was Gertrude or Gwynevere or whoever you theorize it might be
He started off bringing her tongues and recruiting other fingers to do the same to comfort her, as the tongues' description says, but witnessed Heysel turn into a grub and decided he'd had enough
He kills her, takes her soul to Gwynevere's chamber (which is why I personally favor her being Gwynevere rather than Gertrude), and calls you a monster for rebirthing yourself because he's seen that rebirthing does literally turn you into a monster

It actually doesn't, because the Profaned Flame is explicitly NOT the Chaos of Izalith. I never bought into the Lost Sinner = Witch of Izalith theory.

Leonhard made the same mistake a lot of lore shitters on youtube make: thinking Rosaria is Gwynevere when she obviously isn't.

Thinking a bit on it, it's possible Leonhard was some kind of distant relative of the Gwyn family and was a Darkmoon long before the events of DaS3 (y'know, what with Gwyndolin having already been eaten by the start of the game and all)

He may have pledged himself and gotten the sickle, but later abandoned the Darkmoons when everything went to shit
Maybe even got burned in the process by those fire-shooting deacons or Pontiff's flame sword
Then he goes looking around for rebirth, finds Rosaria, realizes she's somebody important because he's royalty, etc.

wrong thread? /dsg/ is over on Veeky Forums.

my bad

You literally find Getrude's corpse in the grand archives guarded by her knights. Rosaria is Gwynevere.

>Rosaria was Gertrude
That one's kind of easy to shoot down, cause Gertrude is said to have been stored in that cage in the Archives, the one with a bunch of shed feathers in it, and Rosaria doesn't have any sign of wings or feathers. Could argue that she just remade herself, as she does for her followers, but seems more likely that they're separate people.
Her soul can be transposed to Bountiful Sunlight, "Special Miracle granted by the Princess of Sunlight", key words 'granted by', implies it was given to Rosaria rather than produced by her.
"The goddess" could also refer to Yorshka. She's a crossbreed, but still a god, and the current leader of the Darkmoon covenant. Gwyndolin was raised as a girl, but is still referred to as a god, male, in item descriptions.
He also never intended to be reborn himself ever, evidenced by the description for his mask. He's probably not unfamiliar to what happens to people who ask to be reborn too many times, since the entire area is populated with man-grubs, and he shows no kind of friendship towards Heysel, so I doubt her grubbification would be the one that pushes him over the edge. Could be he always intended to betray Rosaria, and was just waiting for the last of her defenders, Heysel and Kirk, to become useless grubs or be killed by someone else, before taking her soul.
The fact that he's a parallel for Lautrec kind of goes without saying. Maybe he thought he could restore Gwynevere with Rosaria's soul? he hates Rosaria the person, but finds her soul to be precious.

>It actually doesn't, because the Profaned Flame is explicitly NOT the Chaos of Izalith. I never bought into the Lost Sinner = Witch of Izalith theory.
The sinner inherited the witch's soul, but aside from that, the cat tells you that the sinner ALSO tried to make her own replica of the first flame, but her version never showed up in DkS2 (we only saw the old chaos which is the Chaos Flame). The Japanese name of the profaned flame is the Sinner's Flame.

what happened to flame god flan?

>the Profaned Flame is explicitly NOT the Chaos of Izalith
Yeah I know, and that's why I think it's a third thing, seperate from the First Flame and Chaos Flame yet still tangentially related to them.

Says she tried, not that she had anything to show for her efforts. There's no evidence that she actually produced any kind of flame.
>The Japanese name of the profaned flame is the Sinner's Flame
More accurately, "Flame of Sin", I believe, and the "City of Sin" for Profaned Capital. Makes it sound more related to the First Sin, ie. the linking of the flame.

Didn't the Sinner have the Witch's soul because of that bug that crawls into her eye and makes her go full rage mode?

First Sin/Original Sin is its own special word in Japanese IIRC so it's different from sin/sinner.

Isn't Leonhard described as once being one of the deacons of the deep, who abandoned that for his devotion to Rosaria? The Archdeacon Skirt seems to point towards that.

He's living a comfy life with Gwynevere far away from all these shenanigans.

More likely she had the soul as part of her efforts to relight the fire. The scorpion is just an aesthetic thing, like she's been there so long she has bugs crawling all over and inside her.

Oh really? That'd poke some holes in my theory, so interesting in that's the case, but I can't find anything confirming that, looks like 00tn2 never covered the stuff added in SotFS.

The bug does look like the bug from Bed of Chaos though.

Please don't tell me that picture's from Lords of the Fallen

Yeah, I personally don't subscribe to the Gertrude version of the theory, but I was just throwing it in because it's something I've heard other people talk about and it doesn't make much difference to me either way.

>key words 'granted by'

This is something interesting actually. The Dancer's soul can be used to make the other Princess Guard miracle, and that one reads it was granted to Gwynevere's handmaidens, whereas the Rosaria miracle just says it was granted by Gwynevere.
I figure if both were given to handmaidens, they'd have just copy pasted the descriptions, but they didn't, which I confirmation-bias my way into thinking suggests it's Gwynevere.

>He also never intended to be reborn himself ever
He did though.

>Crescent Moon Sickle
>Leonhard set out on a journey of rebirth, but decided instead to serve the goddess as a knight, and inherited this weapon.

Note the juxtaposition
He sought out rebirth, BUT ended up serving "the goddess" instead
People who get rebirthed by Rosaria already serve the goddess, there's no "but" there
However, say he went looking for rebirth, decided to hit up Anor Londo because deities used to live there, and met Gwyndolin who told him "this rebirth shit is whack, go save Rosaria"
And to back up my Lthat idea, Rosaria's fingers aren't called knights, Darkmoons are called knights
I will agree it could just as easily be Yorshka as Gwyndolin, but I think it's somewhat irrelevant which one of them it is, more relevant is just the part where he pledged himself to whatever moon-related waifu was around at the time and became an undercover Darkmoon
Some people also do refer to Gwyndolin as a goddess, a lot of them say "Lady Gwyndolin" or "Mistress Gwyndolin" (namely the Anor Londo firekeeper in DaS1)

Also, side note with no real relevance but it's just interesting, you do find a grub on the rafters right by Gertrude's corpse, for whatever the hell that might mean

It does say one of the deacons revered her, but I think it's too hard to assume it's Leonhard based just on that versus all the things which suggest other theories.
I'd say it's unlikely that Leonhard was both royalty AND an archdeacon of the cathedral.

pc cuck get the fuck out
not knowing the best boss from the best game of the series

Demons Souls isn't canon in the Dark Souls universe.

pls

It's from Demon's Souls.

And it vaguely resembles one of the chaos bugs that gets Solaire, but not THE Chaos Bug, which looks more like a curled up larva. Plus The Chaos Bug was canonically slain by the Chosen Undead.

>I figure if both were given to handmaidens, they'd have just copy pasted the descriptions
I can kind of buy that, but I still think if Rosaria was supposed to be Gwynevere they'd just say "Miracle of Gwynevere" rather than "granted by". I think it's entirely possible she's a daughter of Gwynevere, promiscuous as she is, and Sulyvhan had her imprisoned there. Gwynevere's implied to be pretty damn powerful, being a direct child of Gwyn, I don't think Sulyvhan, for all his power, would be able to capture her. But this is getting further and further into almost baseless speculation, so I'm personally inclined to just shrug it away as "any possibility is possible".

>He did though.
Ah yeah, I missed that. I was going by the Silver Mask description.
>In his youth, Leonhard suffered grave burns to his entire body. His face in particular, which he hid beneath his mask, was terribly scalded.
>He abstained from restoring these injuries, even after becoming a Finger of Rosaria.
So yeah, sounds like he intended to, then later changed his mind, probably after seeing what happens to people are continually reborn by Rosaria's hand.

>and met Gwyndolin who told him "this rebirth shit is whack, go save Rosaria"
I agree with you that he very likely became an undercover Darkmoon, with the moon sickle and being called a knight, and that's why I think Rosaria is RELATED to Gwynevere, but not actually her. Gwyn's family is all pretty self-protective, makes sense that they'd want her bought to Anor Londo.

>"Mistress Gwyndolin" (namely the Anor Londo firekeeper in DaS1)
darksouls.wikidot.com/lady-of-the-darkling
>When killed
>… Master Gwyndolin…

I'm not going to stop posting my stupid shit no matter how dead the thread is

To continue with throwing Leonhard at the wall and seeing what sticks:
Say Leonhard was part of the royal family in Irithyll, hung around that area a lot, maybe wandered up to Anor Londo at times and palled around with Gwyndolin
Maybe became a Darkmoon as he got older
Then one day old pal Pontiff makes his bid for power
Suddenly big fat blob Aldrich is eating people left and right

Remember, Horace goes crazy in an area RIGHT before the entrance to Irithyll, and his equipment says

>Horace is one of only two children to escape Aldrich's clutches

So who's the other child?
Maybe Leonhard
Say Leonhard and Horace both live in Irithyll when Aldrich shows up, and the two of them are the only humans to escape
Aldrich is shown to have fire powers, explaining Leonhard's burns, and Horace never shows any of his body, while his equipment says he found comfort in his armor being "cold"
Horace may have been just as, if not more, burned up than Leonhard
Maybe Horace got the worst of it, which is why he won't even speak and goes crazy even approaching Irithyll, whereas Leonhard seems to have lost it a bit but not gone completely insane/hollow
Then later when Leonhard takes Rosaria's soul to Gwynevere's chamber, it's also him getting his revenge on Aldrich

No I don't take this as fact at all and it's just some shit I threw together but hey what else are these threads for if not bullshitting until you get something decent

My mistake, I don't have the dialogue from DaS1 memorized despite playing the game a thousand times

I'm positive Gwyndolin is referred to as a woman by at least one character at some point though, unless that's me being in denial about wanting to bang men again

The other child is Anri.

The other child is clearly Sans.

Gonna need some explanation on that one mang
I don't know of any dialogue or item descriptions that suggest that
The two are close friends but I don't know that that's much to base Anri being the second child on

She says she's doing it for the children in Yorshka church because she was there with the others and escaped.

Someone who actually KNOWS much of anything about Gwyndolin, though?

They're incredibly close - it's not outrageous to assume they went through something horrific together.
Anri is focused entirely on Aldrich. Their storyline does not extend to any of the other Lords of Cinder.
"For the children I knew" - Aldrich's other meals who weren't so lucky.

She?

>she

I'm entirely open to be being proven wrong, but gotta have dat evidence to back it up.

>but hey what else are these threads for if not bullshitting until you get something decent
Couldn't agree more.

Leonhard being the other child is an interesting thought, and I like the idea of his burns coming from Sulyvhan. Not a whole lot supporting it, but a cool idea.

He was obviously burned by Jester Thomas.

Maybe that motherfucker is the result of the Lost Sinner's attempts to create another flame. Witch of Izalith spawned demons, Lost Sinner spawned fucking Satan incarnate.

Yeah, I think it's more likely Anri is the other child. It's easy, but it works.

I don't know of when he/she says this. Maybe I missed something but not even the wiki is showing any dialogue like that.

I can see that, and I kinda like the idea, but if he/she and Horace are close friends he/she could just be attempting to get revenge for Horace, not necessarily for the both of them.
I'll say it's a lot more simple and therefore more likely than my idea, but Anri doesn't necessarily have to be the second child in order to want to kill the giant evil blob monster that ate an entire city of people.

do NOT remind me

>I don't know of when he/she says this. Maybe I missed something but not even the wiki is showing any dialogue like that.
darksouls3.wikidot.com/anri-of-astora
>In Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, by the Church of Yorshka bonfire
>Oh, I thought it might be you. Good to see you.
>I never managed to find Horace.
>But my duty must be done, even alone. As an unkindled Lordseeker.
>For the children I knew, bless their souls.
Wikidot was slow to start, but they've become pretty comprehensive.

But Anri is supposedly from Astora. Why would she be a child from Irithyl?

No, she took the Astora style and name. Astora is long destroyed.

From the Elite Knight set.
>The mere mention of Astora invoked wistful pangs, and perhaps it was such a dream that drew Anri to this faraway home known only by name
Astoria is long since destroyed. She wasn't born in Astora, she just went there, made it her home, took up the name.

People were being kidnapped and sent via the road of sacrifices to the Cathedral of the Deep to be Aldrich food. That's what the children were.

Even then,
> Dialogue at Firelink Shrine after defeating Deacons of the Deep

>"Oh. And we meet again. We spoke before on the road of sacrifices. Anri of Astora. I am well pleased to see you safe. We reached the Cathedral of the Deep, but Aldrich's coffin was empty. The man-eater must have left for his true home. The little doll in the empty coffin told me. Aldrich is said to hail from Irithyll in the Boreal Valley, an ancient fabled city..."

It doesn't sound like she was ever there at all.

...

I'm going to interject in the middle of this and say that Yuria's knowledge of Anri, even to the fact that Anri is actually hollow, suggests Anri could be from Londor originally
But Anri never acknowledges Yuria or knows anything of her plan
It seems like there's a lot to Anri that goes unsaid, considering taking his/her soul is enough to be able to usurp the flame

Seems more to me like you're stealing their darksign/curse power.

>called "Anri of Astora"
>from Londor

Yuria also knows that Orbeck of VINHEIM is hollow even though he doesn't look it at all.

Not to agree with that guy, buy seems to indicate she was originally from elsewhere. In fact that sounds to me like she's never even been there.

Wish the translation blog guy could look this up, shame he's not updating because of the plebbit cancer.

Yeah, Anri is originally from somewhere else, ended up going to Astora following the stories and legends of old heroes from there. Ended up taking the name Anri of Astora to emulate those old heroes.

From the way she says it, and from Orbeck's character in general, I think she was just straight up lying about that.
A new sorceror shows up in Firelink and suddenly she goes "THAT GUY'S TRYING TO TAKE YOUR PLACE, HE WANTS TO BE THE HOLLOW KING, GO KILL HIM ASAP."
Whereas Orbeck just seems like a generally nice guy with a shady past he's trying to move on from, and learn some cool spells while he's at it.

Anri she doesn't really have reason to lie about though, and Anri shows up in the usurpation ending as a hollow. And since Anri is implied to not really be from Astora, he/she could be from anywhere, whereas Orbeck specifically talks about his time in the Vinheim dragon school.

Yeah, you get his/her three dark sigils to give you a total of eight. But unkindled don't naturally hollow, they can only hollow when they've purposely taken the dark sigil from someone with the power to give it like Yoel could.
And the only people known to be able to give people dark sigils are from Londor.
So Anri HAS to have at least met and chummed around with someone from Londor who had it in their power to grant people dark sigils.

From how the handmaiden is able to produce new items from the ashes of characters, and Londor is quite sorcery-influenced, might be that Yuria wants Orbeck's ashes to make new spells, and she just feeds you the "he'll try to take your rightful place!" line as motivation?

Maybe she got them from the pilgrim "leading" her from Irithyll onward.

Makes sense, though the timing is a little weird.
Yuria first mentions her friend helping out Anri after you talk to Anri in the catacombs and says "he/she is hollow," suggesting it's already happened.
If just having the dark sigil by itself means you're already hollow then the phrasing makes sense though.

If that's the case, then it would actually explain specifically the choice by From of where/when in the game to put Anri.
If Anri is nobody special and Yuria just decided to sacrifice whatever random opposite-of-your-sex person to walk into Firelink, then obviously Anri has to come as one of the earlier NPCs you meet.
And depending on how you interpret the Untended Graves Firelink, the Firekeeper and Andre might not even be real people.
This obviously is kind of weak though since Greirat, Irina, and Eygon can all show up before Anri does, but then that comes down to arguing convenience for From to just have one dedicated character that's always your opposite sex and is always the one to be sacrificed.
So whether or not Anri is actually someone special ends up as an argument over game design efficiency which is lame.

While Yurias religion is probably bullshit i dont think she is dishonest like that. She is a true believer. If you do the hollow ending and then go kill Yuria she lets you do it. She doesent resist at all.
When you do Orbecks quest his corpse is hollow so he does have the dark sign.

If Anri was one of the children that escaped from Aldrich, why did he/she need a pilgrim to tell them that Aldrich was from Irithyll and give them directions?

Because the cathedral was Aldriches home.

Just because you're being fed to a hideous blob monster doesn't mean you know it's life story. Aldrich spent most of his time in the Cathedral of the Deep, remember?

So I haven't seen much if any theories on the Mound Makers does anyone have any tasty lore about them and what their whole deal is?

They're all Gwynevere. Just like how Gertrude is both Rosaria and Gwynevere. Everone in Dark Souls 3 is Gwynevere.

I'm right because I can make tenuous links to vague lore that don't make sense when looked at critically.

Someone sounds mad that he doesn't have any good theories

There's not a whole lot in regards to lore outside the ties to Sirris through Hodrick. They're mainly a gameplay thing.

None of the theories in Dark Souls 3 are good.

Just like how none of the theories in 2 or 1 were good.

This is the same level of "No Ornstein is totally Gwyn's firstborn guys seriously." type shit people were doing five years ago.

I was under the impression that Ornstien was Smough's clone in disguise and that Smough was Aldrich.

Y'know most people in the thread are being nice and posting their own theories, no matter how dumb they might be five years from now, instead of shitposting about how everyone else sucks and is dumb except for you

It all makes sense this way.

That.

You know you're right. I'll make an attempt to be more constructive with criticisms next time rather than just shitposting.

...

I've always been really confused about whether or not the undead/unkindled are supposed to crumble to dust or leave corpses behind when they're killed. The entire point of throwing the cursed undead into the Asylum or putting them in cages or any of the other practices for dealing with throughout the series, I always assumed that was because if you killed them they crumbled to dust and then respawned like the player character does.

But certain characters like Anri, who introduces herself as "Unkindled, like you," will leave corpses behind as part of their plotlines if they die.

On that note, isn't the whole point of the cursed undead that they keep reanimating until they lose hope, and then go Hollow when they do? There's a bunch of NPCs throughout the games, especially in DSIII, who are supposed to be undead or unkindled who just die permanently if something bad happens to them. Siegward of Catarina, for example, seems to be an incredibly spirited man as well as an Unkindled when you first encounter him but from what I've read if he dies in the fight against the demon that's the last you ever see of him.

The line between lore and gameplay consideration gets blurry when you start questioning things like that. I mean it's pretty fairly demonstrated that undead can be permanently put down, like Siegmeyer was by his daughter, and like you do to the Undead Legion, but what causes permanent death isn't really certain.

Maybe it's dismembering? The saws and shit in the Undead Settlement, would seem to suggest that as one way of dealing with undead.

Possibly. That'd fit in with the Cinders of Lords being decapitated heads.

Here's just me spitballing, but this is how I read Anri and Horace's story.
>Anri and Horace are two kids being brought to the Cathedral of the Deep as snack-rifices.
>Horace does something to engender Anri's trust, and gets his tongue/vocal cords fucked up (Probably from a rosaria's finger).
>They manage to escape before Aldritch eats them.
>Years later, Anri and Horace set up on a quest to go kill Aldritch and avenge their fallen snack-friends.
>Along the way, they meet a pilgrim like Yoel who gives them the darksign. Unbeknownst to them, the pilgrim keeps following them under a contingency plan from the Yuria/the Sable Church (Hey look, a relatively powerful unkindled, lets put tabs on them)
>Gameplay occurs, they find out aldritch booked it.
>By the time they reach the catacombs, Horace hollows out, because dark sigils and finding out that Aldritch is in, as far as he can tell, fucking narnia.
>Meanwhile, Yuria tells the spy to make for the kill, she's got a brand new Lord of Hollows in the making.
>Now plotline split: If you save Anri, they go up to fight Aldritch, hoping Horace shows up. He doesn't, and you help them kill Aldritch. However, now without purpose and now a hollow because of the pilgrim's sigils, Anri treks back to the cathedral and hollows out on the way, or finds Horace's body and hollows out.
>If you let anri get ganked, you take their sigils and ascend as the dark lord. Now as a hollow with the power of the first flame, you can bring back anri just fine, and rule over the everything.

One problem- Anri, and possibly Horace, is an unkindled too, and unkindled are ressurrected from the dead to bring back the runaway lords of cinder.

I'm thinking then that they died and became unkindled later on. ACUTALLY that might be where horace lost his tongue. They get ganked by a finger (Probably Leonhard, because) and get stone cold murdered. When they get brought back, he still doesn't have the tongue, because covenant rules and lacking the ashes.

It might be that there's a stage of hollowing so advance you just stop acting entirely and essentially become a corpse. Take the cages in the Undead Settlement that don't move for example, even though they were used to contain Undead. Plus, the corpses in Irithyll Dungeon that briefly reanimate and scream at you if you take their items. Maybe lots of the corpses you encounter in the series are just Undead who've advanced to such a severe stage of mental and physical decay they don't even act aggressively anymore.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the item descriptions of stuff you find in the Undead Settlement and Cathedral of the Deep also indicate that the more you butcher an Undead, the longer it takes for them to come back to life.

Of course, as says, it's hard to draw the line between lore and gameplay a lot of the time. And From just kind of forgets that the Undeads' whole shtick is reviving endlessly when it comes to NPCs.

You know, we ought to get a wiki or pastebin or something going to put together stuff that's been discussed and agreed upon enough (like Aldia's involvement with Lothric)

There's already soulslore.wikidot.com but I don't know who manages and contributes to that.

But that's the thing
>agreed upon enough
There is no such thing. People still argue endlessly over DaS1 lore, let alone DaS3. For example,
>Aldia's involvement with Lothric
I personally don't buy this. I don't deny that such a connection is possible, because I think the Soul Stream description is meant to bring Aldia to mind, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's anything more than a neat reference, nor would I try to find a place for Aldia in Lothric's lore.

There's other stuff as well.

Items like the Undead Bone Shard and the like pretty well indicate that eventually undead do become corpses.

My bet is that eventually even Hollows lose the will to act, and eventually just stop. Hell, Hollows might simply still have some will to live and desire souls, just not enough to remain sane. So an Undead could even possibly simply skip past Hollow to just dead.

I think it'd be useful for agreed upon things and contended points. Just somewhere to document things that have been discussed, and linking to evidence to support any arguments.

Given that they're Unkindled, they probably got brought back round the time that Aldrich did. The Unkindled are apparently supposed to be people who failed to light the fire (unfit even for cinders etc.) and all that.

It's kind of interesting how there's almost like there's a designated Unkindled for every Lord of Cinder, really. Anri and Horace for Aldritch, Hawkwood for the Abyss Watchers, and Siegward for Yhorm. The princes are off doing their own thing and have apparently killed a few Unkindled by the time you show up if their dialogue is any indication.

Then again, who knows. The timeline for Dark Souls 3 is complicated enough without bringing Lordran's timey-wimey bullshit and Lothric's converging transient lands into the mixture. (Carthus is a desert kingdom! What the hell are the Catacombs doing underneath Darkroot Garden?)
Yhorm came before Aldritch, since the Pontiff found the ruins of the Profaned Capital and whatnot, and the princes are probably the most recent Lord of Cinder, but how much time is supposed to have passed between each linking of the fire? There was a thousand years between Gwyn and the Chosen Undead, but I guess it's gotten a lot shorter since then.
Did Pontiff Sullyvahn send out his Outriders after the bells tolled or before it? How long has Irythill's seeming invasion of Lothric gone on?

>The princes are off doing their own thing
They're not lords of cinder so they don't count

>They're not lords of cinder
>they have a throne for a Lord of Cinder
>they're part of the ritual to link the fire
>they drop Cinders of a Lord
Sure thing buddy. Everything else points to a Lord of Cinder being one with the potential to link the fire, and named as such, whether they actually do or not.

Holy shit thank you
I am tired of this
>Lothric is not a Lord of Cinder
meme