(The embedded versions have two licenses, one for the tooling, which I have access to through work's Visual Studio subscription, and the runtime one, which is supposed to be specific to a product, and thus requires you to buy it separately - the runtime serial can be dumped from any image, so you can just get it from a thin client of the appropriate era)
I also now understand why Windows 10 is built from individual components with dependencies now - it's literally what they've done for Embedded since the early days, except instead of untangling things after the fact, they keep things compartmentalized from the get go.
This also makes odd dependencies more obvious, like how in XP Embedded adding a serial device driver adds modem support, which adds a ton of GUI stuff