Adding a romance to certain genre characters, from my ancient point of view, can unbalance mythic/psychological power that the character & their exploits exude. There are character who it works for and others that just don’t ring true. They can be re-interpreted, as you point out, but it is very challenging to make it work successfully.

I can also see how a plethora of hetero-characters over the multiple decades has produced a lack of role models, the same way a lack of racial, ethnic and gender diversity lean large parts of the audience culturally disenfranchised. Hopefully future developments in building a wider more diverse cultural mythos through genre narratives will create a better balance.

BTW: Are you familiar with the Wold Newton Universe ? It is a meta-fictional interpretation of a wide selection of fictional characters, starting with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan and the Shadow. The conceit is that they were all real and all connected ( Why do they all share common physical features and similar attributes ? – all heroes have grey eyes). Some writers/biographers have extended this to include various other characters from Victorian Literature & Pulp Literature.