Backwards compatibility is the whole reason for choosing x86 over ARM, MIPS, RISC-V, etc. Sadly it seems some people at Intel and AMD don't realise this.
Backwards compatibility is good and necessary. But I don't think backwards compatibility going all the way back to the 8086 is. If someone has software written for the 8086 at this point, they would be far better served by running it in dosbox or something than on bare metal.
Neither did the Itanium (Itanic).
Backwards compatibility is the whole reason for choosing x86 over ARM, MIPS, RISC-V, etc. Sadly it seems some people at Intel and AMD don't realise this.