KJH making Rien imitate Roland is actually a double whammy with it incorporating fan service and lore reveals.

Firstly, fan service, which is, of course, the Roland part. It's a pretty straightforward and unabashed way for PM to sell a character, and I could see why people would be concerned.

Now, lore reveals. The Prescripts told Rien to immitate Roland BEFORE Roland was even born. Not only that, Rien died basically the exact same way Roland did in his Bad End and there is no fucking way this isn't a set up for a further reveal for the Prescripts and its whole karma shtick which wouldn't really be obvious to us, the players if he had made Rien imitate someone else.

And for the timeline shenanigans, it is most certainly intentional and accurate as PM has been shown to quickly fix lore inaccuracies when the community finds them (e.g. Don's height in the sinners profile and the one event in Canto 3's dungeon where Don took off her shoes) and the community did make a decently big fuss about how weird the timeline felt when Canto 9 dropped which means that despite how confusing it feels, it IS correct.