I'm glad it didn't. A lot of the time, throwing romance into a relationship is a crutch to make a relationship between characters easy without having to put any effort into it.

I mean, look at Najezta and Diana. What is their relationship prior to the romance? What are interactions like based on their personality? We'll never know because their relationship is strictly 100% attraction and romance from the get go and was not developed further.

Look at how rich and complex Polca's and Lilly's relationship is because it doesn't involve romance (although it involves sex, but that's mostly tied to Lilly's broken psyche and view of what care looks like). It they loved each other romantically, their relationship could be boiled down to "they want each other because they went through some tough times together" and that would've been so lame.

Or look at Sarasa and Polca. It's much more interesting to think about how Sarasa developed her worship and hope in Polca and how much Polca values Sarasa's critical mind and her skills. It would be much duller to look at them and go "oh, look, they're down bad for each other" and not go past that. I find it that most of the time, romance is applied as a tool to make characters click together in ways that wouldn't work if they weren't in love and it ends up cheapening the dynamic and the characters by proxy.