Theory: Giantdad was the true antagonist of dark souls the entire time!!!

Gwyn, lord of cinder, is known for being the primary villain of dark souls due to linking the first flame in order to shackle mankind to his age of fire, thereby using humanity as a tool to ensure the age of the gods lasted forever. However, what if I told you that the entire reason the cycle of dark and light exist and is sustained is due to giantdad?

Have you ever wondered just why it is gwyn enslaved giants? I mean, giants, those are a pretty risky thing to make a slave, let alone let live in your capitol as guardians. Giants are powerful, immense in size and not particularly friendly, so why of all the things gwyn could have made a slave, did he make something so dangerous one?

the answer? 

Giantdad.

Giantdad, or the legend, father of giants, was quite possibly the most powerful being in the souls universe, unkillable, unstoppable, hell it's even rumored that his wife was noneother than velka, the goddess of sin (others claim it was fina, goddess of beauty, which also makes sense, velka was probably an old flame)

Events of the age of Ash and the dragon wars

But despite his immense power, he didn't aid gwyn in defeating the dragons, he ignored the treachery of seathe the scaleless and pretty much shrugged off any and all involvement. But gwyn saw in this former ruler of the age of grey and nothingness a serious threat, one that, if left unchecked, could have potentially ruined his kingdom.

to mitigate this threat he resorted to cowardice, capturing as many giants as he could and brainwashing them to do his bidding, incensed, the legend stormed the capitol of anor londo, which the giants had a tendency to call "anal rodeo" because of how difficult it was to even take two steps without a darkmoon blade tearing you a new asshole, and there gwyn laid down his terms.

Join him and wear the armor of the giants and the mask of the father and he could lead the giants as the captain of the guardians of anor londo, refuse and his kind would pay the ultimate price.

giantdad, despite everything, was still a father, and any father cares deeply for his children, even if they happen to number in the thousands.

so giantdad did precisely that, donning the set and mask and having a blacksmith in the deep forests forge him a weapon so powerful, that upon finishing the weapon the poor man turned to stone from the exhaustion.

Events Of Dark Souls 1

But giantdad wasn't ready to throw in the towel, he'd given gwyn the illusion of peace through subjugation, but giantdad wanted to ensure that he not only got payback, but that he and his kind had considerable clout left for when things went to hell.

by his reckoning, nothing but giants would be left to claim anor londo once he was done with things.

so giantdad set out on a pilgrimage to oolacile, then past it, he was looking for the goddess velka.

when he finally found velka he explained the situation and all but begged her to aid him in setting up a long plan to ensure that the age of the gods would be sustained, but not for the humans or the gods, but for the giants.

from there he set out to find two primordial serpents and then asked them to help out with his plan, he would find a means to make the first flame fade, and in return they would manipulate the undead velka sent to anor londo for whatever reasons they wished. the ultimate result would be to force an ebbing and flowing of time and space, with a safe enough pocket between light and dark that the giants would still have their little slice of paradise with few, if any real intrusions. during the war one of giantdad's favorite sons, hawkeye gough, had earned a substantial reputation, and though gwyn had initially considered lowering his status, giantdad insisted that gough was more than knightly material, and after several hours of hemming and hawing and pleading and bargaining, he eventually got his son a spot in the four knights of gwyn. thus giantdad elevated his people in gwyn's society, despite their status as slaves they were now treasured and revered as one of the key pillars of civilization.

once everything was set up, giantdad made his way to the kiln and urinated on the first flame, the first flame began to go out and the gods began panicking.

seathe, so enamored in his studies, couldn't give less of a rat's ass as to what one washed up captain of the sentinels was up to, but the witch of izalith was entirely certain that giantdad was to blame, so she decided that instead of trying to rekindle the first flame, which would play perfectly into his hands, she'd use her own soul to make an artificial flame.

the effort backfired, and the demons were born, something giantdad hadn't quite foreseen, and he grudgingly ended up marking izalith off the "places I want to bring the family on vacation" list.

from there things only got progressively worse, at some point gwyn's son sided with dragons, and gwyn lost it and exiled him. giantdad was saddened by this for a couple of reasons, one, he'd need a figurehead and two, he kinda liked the firstborn, they were good pals after the dragon wars and sparring was quite common between them, but he shrugged and let it go.

Artorias of the abyss incident

kaathe then stabbed giantdad in the back when he went to oolacile, one of giantdad's favorite places, and ended up forcing a spread of the abyss so severe that artorias, one of his drinking buddies, had to sacrifice himself in order to stop the spread.

from there giantdad vowed to raise his puppy sif, eventually stationing him at artorias's grave. to ensure that sif wouldn't die of old age, he gave the wolf a piece of his own soul and finished sif's greatsword training. the side effect was that sif grew to gigantic proportions, so giantdad had to have the smith forge him a sword that would compliment his size.

eventually giantdad stopped paying sif visits, giving a permanent farewell with but one command "no matter who comes into this place, be he friend or family, you are to kill them on sight. nobody but you are to touch this grave. got it?"

when sif met the true savior of oolacile he would find himself in a very sad position indeed years later, because giantdad's word was practically law to the wolf. duty over personal feelings.

Kaathe, unlike frampt, had driven oolacile to the brink, frampt was going along with giantdad's plan, but giantdad had never factored in the artificial spread of the abyss as something even remotely necessary, so he decided to test the hero of oolacile himself before permitting him to continue on into the future.

After being "defeated" giantdad found him worthy to maintain the abyss, and decided to put a little faith into kaathe's half of the plan, kaathe, overjoyed by this turn of events, gave giantdad the ring he would eventually place on the grave, knowing full well who would come to pick it up when the abyss came forth again.

after oolacile gwyn was at his limit, his kings had betrayed him, izalith was a hellhole and nobody even knew what seathe was doing, nor did they want to.

deciding it was high time to bring the first flame back to life, he set himself on fire to extend his age of flame, from there velka unleashed the curse of undeath in full while giantdad supplied the remaining gods with serpentine swords that could pin down time and space, forcing the undead back to the bonfires.

the gods, on giantdad's own advice, began using the undead as a form of fuel for linking the first flame. during this time some rogues worked to spread the abyss, and so it went, back and forth without end, the ebb and flow of the cycle began in earnest while gwyndolin tried to hold everything together in vain.

giantdad eventually had a son by fina, and gave him a copy of the ring of favor and protection for him to use. havel, who'd been one of his closest friends (he was a very charismatic fellow) gave him his other ring, and then giantdad elected to wait for things to come to a head. and come they did, the first linking of the flame occurred shortly after it began fading again, and during this time the very same undead giantdad had fought in oolacile rose up to put an end to gwyn and link the fire himself.

Events of dark souls 2

with that out of the way, giantdad left anor londo and created a new race of giants with velka, stealing the lordvessel and creating a system that would allow giants to link the flame. the vestiges of the four soul were still in the vessel and could be used as their own form of kindling, it didn't hurt that he'd taken the ashes of the first flame along to ensure that the giants would be the ones to link the flame.

this new race of giants were very much unlike the ones giantdad had originally sired, some had faces, while others didn't, and perhaps due to his intention of having them link the new first flame and survive the process, they all had the appearance of charcoal.

for many ages it was this race of "wooden" giants that held the linking rituals and kept the world from falling into permanent darkness.

it was also during these times of peace that kings began encountering relics or items from anor londo during each freshly linked age and trying to make use of them, usually with deadly consequences.

for the people of the sunken city it was sinh, the slumbering dragon, from which they tried to make more dragons.

for the iron king it was an excess of fire that ultimately led his passions to become too much for his loyal knight to handle, resulting in a feud between them that ended in tragedy.

for the ivory king it was the discovery of a chaos vent on the other side of the world, where the demons of izalith ran amok on the other side of the world in a frigid tundra.

little did giantdad realize that kaathe's treachery ran far deeper than he could have envisioned, kaathe wanted to reign over the ebb and flow era himself, and so he spread more serpent swords across these kingdoms while fragments of manus took on a life of their own and instinctively sought to bring ruin to these kings at kaathe's behest.

one fell in love with her king, another never even reached hers, still another had her designs foiled by the folly of drangleic's drakeblood knights.

only one had the presence of mind to steal the lordvessel and the throne the giants were using to artificially link the flame. kaathe showed her how giantdad and velka created the curse of the undead and with the aid of the lion knights, who didn't realize that they were working against giantdad, pots of undead curse were taken to drangleic to be used in an elaborate scheme to take the throne of want by using velka's undead curse against the people of drangleic.

Giantdad of course knew nothing of this until the theft had occurred and his children were already across the ocean, and by the time he'd crossed after them his firstborn son of that particular race of giants had gone missing, presumably dead.

eventually giantdad found the lordvessel at majula, and in a fit of rage smashed it to pieces and then proceeded to draw a map on the ground of the basement, trying to determine where the lord souls were.

unfortunately he couldn't trace the location of these souls, but his pursuit led him to create a covenant that would ensure that only the worthy could be the ones to find these souls, the covenant of champions.

it was during his search that the queen, seeing the threat he posed, created the pursuers in a vain attempt to hunt him down and put an end to him.

unfortunately he was the legend, so that plan flew right out the window, the pursuers were so frightened of him that they bred a species of giant bird to carry them out of the area should he ever show up.

Events of Dark Souls 3

eventually giantdad gave up the hunt, losing patience and decided that, since he'd set it up so that an undead would eventually find the lord souls and perform the linking process, that there was no longer anything to worry about.

Just to be safe however, he decapitated the baneful queen mytha, worried that the undead would be too taken by her beauty, then he warped time and space around the earthen peak so that the iron keep would connect via a temporal elevator, to ensure that no undead lost their way.

he then left drangleic forever, but his mask was left behind beneath brume tower, the mask itself had been terribly weathered by old age, and it had lost all of its hair and grown a beard. giantdad, after having seen so many of his dead sons, found that he couldn't stop crying for the loss, eventually his tears became so great that they all but saturated his old mask to the point where the mask itself wouldn't stop crying.

after all what father would want to see so many of his sons dead and turned to trees?

It was after his departure that the nameless king happened upon drangleic, having lost his memories due to the curse of the undead, he eventually worked his way around that problem, reclaimed the souls of the lords as well as that of his own father, acquired the ashen mist heart and relived the memories of the old kings and finally acquired a crown that would forever rid him of the undead curse, but it would do nothing for his good looks sadly.

he left drangleic, to later return to lordran in order to found a dragon covenant out of respect for the herald who'd given him so much of his power and everything else.

Giantdad would not be seen after that, Havel went on to continue fighting dragons, the nameless king ended up fighting ornstein and claiming his armor. the giants lived in relative peace until aldritch, led by pontiff sulavyhn, tried to take control of them, causing them all no end to suffering.

the last of the true gods died in a cage, and the ebbing age of fire and dark, the one giantdad created for his own kin, is now being threatened by a new era, an era of deep.

Giantdad may be gone forever, but his impact on the dark souls universe is what started the whole adventure, one could argue that gwyn's cowardice in trying to keep the legend down is what started it, but it was giantdad, who rigged gwyn's age of fire from behind the scenes leading to chaos only the giants could survive, who was the REAL antagonist of dark souls.

it's only by dark souls 2 that the poor fellow lost his taste for providence when kaathe's manipulations cost the lives of so many wooden giants, pushing giantdad over the edge and forcing him to depart drangleic before he could finish finding the remaining lord souls.

Now, in dark souls 3, kaathe's own designs, which had originally been inspired thanks to giantdad, are fast coming to fruition, after the ultimate failure that is drangleic he's set it up so that the nameless king will be defeated by an unkindled, the remaining goddess has already been dealt with and soon, kaathe's control over the ebb and flow state that giantdad begun will be absolute.

that is, assuming some fool doesn't try to put out the first flame for an age of deep.

with few worthy candidates to link the flame, the serpent is growing desperate, but has nobody left save unkindled who could possibly do the job.

the last time he tried to have a giant link the flame, the result backfired thanks to the lack of the four lord souls, and yhorm was understandably pissed when he woke up.

without the four lord souls, only humans can link the flame, and the nameless king no longer needs to link the fire because he's no longer technically a hollow, he's just really fucking old.

what will happen? will the fire be linked and kaathe's control be assured? will the age of dark come about and, again, kaathe's control be assured? or will some asshole think to themselves "i always wanted to be a fish" and ruin kaathe's plans by creating an age of deep?

who knows what will happen next.