I think Van Aert isn't saying "omg, I'm a prisoner" but rather that he held back a little bit going for green these last two years (no intermediate sprints, not going all out at the end this year because of the olympics) and that he wants to change that next year. He is not demanding a DQS style sprint train.
Regarding your possibe example of Dennis being used for WVA and Roglic crashing as a consequence - that makes no sense, sorry, I don't understand how there's any correlation.
- He didn't, he did look out for him. Watch the footage, at KM13 you have a front shot of the Peleton with Wout in front of Roglic, checking over his shoulder multiple times if Roglic is there. Then in the next kilometer, Roglic needlessly loses his wheel and Wout has to slowly drop back in the group to get him back but it's already to late. He is on the right while Roglic has moved to the left side where he eventually collides with Colbrelli and crashes.
- You don't need an entire train to keep your GC rider safe, Ineos often uses a single rider to keep Bernal past the 3km banner. In any case, while they clearly could've prepared that better it definitely wasn't their intention. I doubt they sat in the bus before and said "Roglic ain't too important for our plans, we'll leave only Wout with him, the rest can do as they please".
They wanted to keep Wout close on GC to have a 2 on 1 situation against Pogacar especially for stage 7, it wasn't that much of a crazy decision. It's an 8km technical descent to the line, how much difference would've Wout actually made if he stayed? 5 seconds?
Again, it's fine to say Jumbo made tactical mistakes these last two years but this discussion was about intent. It's not like they made these mistakes (which I don't even see really, like I said, it's been mainly Roglics own fault) because they can't be bothered to support Roglic.