DRK skill: Living Dead

[Lyth]

...

See, if vengeance and tenacity even in the face of death was the lore reasoning behind it, then you would expect that reaching critical health would make you more resilient in some way (i.e. prevent death for 10 seconds, then give player a shield based on the damage that they prevented). Living Dead as it stands is the least resilient defensive cooldown.

"So as I was saying, that heretic was fighting like a man possessed. Even after he took several wounds, he showed no sign of pain─though there was no mistaking the blood. As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted..."

...

That's very 'kinda-sorta-maybe' for a definitive opinion.

Early iterations of PLD and DRK have more to do with a simple good/evil binary. The only association that you can draw between Dark Knights and undead is that they're both generally viewed as "evil", at which point you can start drawing arbitrary links between DRK any every darkness-elemental monster that you feel like. FFXIV turns all that on its head anyways. Paladins, historically, serve an institution, the Sultanate. They're trained to be bodyguards. If your ruler is corrupt, you've sworn allegiance to that corruption. Free Paladins soften things a bit by letting you choose what your Oaths are bound to, but that doesn't change their tradition of servitude. DRKs actively seek out and punish corrupt rulers, even if it means being exiled to the fringes of society. They serve no Oaths, and are bound to nothing.

"Sacrifice is to renounce that which binds you. To recognize that which matters─and forsake all that does not. At the very least, you must realize that you cannot continue to carry all these burdens... Unless you wish to die a slave."

It's actually a reversal of FF4's dynamic. When you couple the reveal that with the expansion theme that Light is not necessarily good (complete with Light-elemental Undeath), I don't think that your reasoning holds water.

We aren't Death Knights. Leave the Warcraft lore in Warcraft.