Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-94.13.191.233-20150117094150/@comment-182.68.5.40-20150708090619

It could simply go along the lines of what happened to the black knights of dks 1.

Maybe after ornstein died, his armour and the remnants of his soul got corrupted by dark. Now who we face is actually just ornstein's corrupted armour being controlled by the remnants of ornstein's soul. Kind of like what the black knights in dks 1 are.

The soul part can be explained according to the following evidence. We gather the old king soul, old paledrake soul, old witch soul and old dead one soul in NG+ and beyond. These souls are found to be that of gwyn, seath, the witch of izalith and nito's respectively, by inspection. These souls have corroded and reduced in power after eons have passed since the events of dks1. The same mechanism could be and most probably is applied to ornstein's soul too.

That would explain his appearance in dks1.