  The origin of the soft X-ray excess emission observed in many type-1 AGN has
been an unresolved problem in X-ray astronomy for over two decades. We develop
the model proposed Gierlinski & Done (2004), which models the soft excess with
heavily smeared, ionized, absorption, by including the emission that must be
associated with this absorption. We show that, rather than hindering the
ionized absorption model, the addition of the emission actually helps this
model reproduce the soft excess. The emission fills in some of the absorption
trough, while preserving the sharp rise at ~1 keV, allowing the total model to
reproduce the soft excess curvature from a considerably wider range of model
parameters. We demonstrate that this model is capable of reproducing even the
strongest soft X-ray excesses by fitting it to the XMM-Newton EPIC PN spectrum
of PG1211+143, with good results. The addition of the emission reduces the
column density required to fit these data by a factor ~2 and reduces the
smearing velocity from ~0.28c to ~0.2c. Gierlinski & Done suggested a tentative
origin for the absorption in the innermost, accelerating, region of an
accretion disk wind, and we highlight the advantages of this interpretation in
comparison to accretion disk reflection models of the soft excess. Associating
this material with a wind off the accretion disk results in several separate
problems however, namely, the radial nature, and the massive implied mass-loss
rate, of the wind. We propose an origin in a 'failed wind', where the central
X-ray source is strong enough to over-ionize the wind, removing the
acceleration through line absorption before the material reaches escape
velocity, allowing the material to fall back to the disk at larger radii.
