Ladybird is for the modern web, not so the late 90s, early 00s anymore. I don't see a worry of integrating domain-specific third party libraries, we were able to drop thousands of lines of non-Web code that people would otherwise have to maintain.

I'm guessing 2026 was chosen as people would be quickly discouraged by its slow rendering performance right now. The average person would just see it as just a slower browser rather than a serious contender.