You don't need legacy status to carry over your character. If--at any point--you had an active Final Fantasy XIV character, upon reactivation you will be able to download ARR as a massive patch just like everyone else who had played version 1.x.

I believe that they confirmed that even had you bought Final Fantasy XIV 1.x but never activated your account (i.e. you're sitting on an unused activation key code), you will be able to use that to download ARR for free. I'm pretty sure I read that on the official forum, but can't be bothered to try and dig through to find it right now.