What do you make of the fact that the giants frozen at the mountaintops peak appear to have been killed by Death Blight? They have similar brambles running through them as what happens when the player dies to it.
I've been wondering if Godwyn may have been the Prince of Death even before he died and the death root spreading through the Lands Between is simply a power he always had, now running unchecked.
Tbh I'm not entirely sure if its deathblight, since Fromsoft has had a thing in the past with linking giants to trees/portraying dead giants as turning to trees, but if it IS related to death, then I think it's likely linked more to Destined Death than the deathblight that Godwyn rules over. The timeline is never specified, but I think that its implied that the war with the giants happened at the end of Marika's conquest, which means that Maliketh would have defeated the Gloam-Eyed Queen by then. And considering how much of a nightmare the giants are to face, Maliketh utilizing Death against them would have made sense, simply bc, well...giants are a nightmare to face. Though I don't think they were successful in fully killing the Fell God with it, if Fire Giant Phase 2 is any indicator
But then again, Godwyn's whole deal is kind of murky to begin with, and we know that death used to be part of the Elden Ring before Marika peeled it off from the rest of it, so its possible that he did have powers over death before his assassination that never came up until it became a problem! Maybe Godwyn was born the designated Prince of Death after the Gloam-Eyed Queen was slain to be a natural replacement for what Maliketh killed, and his power lay dormant until the soul keeping it in check was slain. That part of the lore is super vague, which means it's basically free real estate for various theories to crop up unless Fromsoft feels fit to give us more context in a DLC or something
