Agreed — consider what happens when you have a node(start: Int, limit: Int) inside or alongside another such node with start and limit.

Your pagination is now two-dimensional, with each node's start/limit as points on its own axis.

Now add a third node to the query. Now you have three-dimensional pagination. This quickly goes off the rails.

Try writing a generic N-dimensional paginator for such a query to see why it's difficult. Even designing a sensible and reasonably flexible API for one is a headache.