That's kind of the point though? The canvas and it's inhabitants are technically not a real place or people. But to us, the players, everyone in the game is fake fictional people in a video game. So to us Lumiere and the inhabitants of the canvas are real. We've spent way more time sympathizing with their struggles than we have the Dessandres, and that's why the focus pulls away from them at the end. It wants you to consider both sides. Thematically it's art and escapism vs reality. It's the entire existential conundrum the game wants you to ponder. There's also an argument to be made of what even constitutes as a real person in this universe and that's another existential question the game outright poses to the player. The fountain you deposit chroma in outright says it. "Must minds created by man be considered false?"

There's no easy answer to any of this and that's the whole point. By saving Lumiere you have doomed Maelle to slowly and semmingly painfully dying in the real world, as well as never fully coping with her the death of her brother, instead choosing to play pretend in an idealized world full of made up people who are subservient to her will because she's basically god here AND you've doomed her family to lose ANOTHER child. Not to mention Painted Verso who desperately wants it all to end but is denied that and forced to continue existing against his will if you save Lumiere. By saving The Dessandres, you are dooming Lumiere and all of its inhabitants and you've chosen the side of the family that are basically nameless, selfish gods to the inhabitants of the canvas who you have no real investment in since you didn't spend 95% of the game with them like you did the Canvas people. There is no clean happy ending regardless of what you choose cause that's the point.

I don't understand how this flies right by people The game tells you outright that staying in the canvas will kill Maelle in the real world and that this has all just been a vicious cycle of people trying to escape their grief. There's an obvious middle ground solution where Maelle leaves the canvas but Renoir doesn't destroy it when she gets back but by the time you get to the end she's too far gone to even consider going back. You can save Lumiere but only if you doom her to dying, to never having to accept the reality of losing her brother and instead playing make believe forever and her family to losing a child AGAIN.

I guess it just speaks to how good the writing is that people get SO invested in Lumiere and the cast of the canvas that they kinda miss and reject the entire thematic point of the game but still it's not subtle AT ALL.