In regards to objection A, redgrave DID mention the whole time is convoluted part about lothric/lordran/souls universe, but his take on it was that it's such a cop-out answer (basically, you can come up with anything in writing/fiction if you give the answer that time/space is convoluted). It's bad storytelling to rely on this deus ex machina.

Redgrave chose to not fallback on this copout, and I agree with him. It makes things far too easy to explain/rely on, without giving true satisfaction of making sense of the lore.

The fact that many of the schools/cultures/countries from DKS1 being forgotten in 2, but then seemingly brought back in 3 just reinforces the fact that 2 wasn't as thought of in terms of the grand scheme of things.

In response to Evidence B: Yes there are references to Dark Souls 2. There's also references to Patches, Moonlight greatsword, chaos blade, stormruler, etc. What I'm trying to say it's not strong enough evidence to make a game canon, since you can argue series like Demon Souls is considered canon to the Dark Souls universe. I think it'd be company suicide to practically excommunicate a game in the series completely; it would alienate that entry and no one would ever buy dark souls 2, knowing that "you don't need to play that one". Miyazaki and publishers/execs can't outright ignore it completely.

At the moment, there just isn't strong enough evidence to me that dark souls 2 is canon/related to the main dark souls lore. There's ideas and concepts that are being used in 3, like Karla being a fragment of Manus, Wolnir gathering crowns to fight off the curse, etc. But they aren't directly referring to dark souls 2.

But, things like the dark souls 1 continents/weapons/lore being forgotten in 2, the random ornstein boss in 2 after confirming the real one went to the peaks + Gwynevere are in lothric, just makes 2 seem so black sheep-like. Toss in the known fact that Miyazaki wasn't directly working on it kind of reinforces the misled direction of the game's connectedness to the lore.

Maybe the DLC will change my mind, if they tie in elyeum loyce with irithyll, or revisiting majula or something.

But to me, Dark Souls 2 isn't canon, at the moment.