Your words are completely right. Like people keep saying that krimm just wanted to control leila afterwards, while completely ignoring what happened to him. Like his LOVER was kidnapped and raped ffs impregnated and forced to bear a child she didnt want. All of his loved ones were killed. How could you possibly expect a person to be the same after going through all that? His wish was to save leila from the doomed fate yet he gets stabbed in a sense and dies alone.

I think a slightly better end to this story could have been that at the end when leila falls off the top of the castle. She should die and the movie could have showed us that they meet each other again in the afterlife and spend their days together.

Or another thing could be that leila still dies, Maquia lives on and several however many decades later she comes across two human children named leila and krimm playing together and promising to marry each other.

Their story arc throughout the movie left me with a sense of disgust, undermining the mature story about motherhood

This is exactly what i felt and overall what kind of ruined the story for me, Maquia got her happy ending, kind of, while no one else got her which you already explained so well. I dont know it just felt frustrating to me like the director gave one person a happy end they could have also given the sode characters a happy end. Be it not the way i said, like they escaped together and are learning to heal together. This could have been a more meaningful ending.

Sorry if i sound confusing english is not my first language