Sure. But that even happens in fairly edgy fantasy.
No. I've literally never seen that happen in any D&D game ever in the last 35 years, not even ones in a podcast or written Actual Play or the like. To hear that suggested as something that happens "often" is wild to me. The closest I can think of is in 2E when you gained followers, but nobody was treating them like that.
The trouble is that this makes for a poor RPG campaign with a game like D&D (there are systems it could work for, mostly specifically designed for such), but as you say, I think D&D isn't going for that.
What I am a bit concerned about though is excessive twee. There is a limit. Cozy fantasy isn't the sole cause of twee, but when things get too twee, they usually generationally doom themselves, and I'm concerned might do that. The bronze dragon or whatever with all the baby dragons (including chromatic ones and a random unicorn and so on) was, for example just utterly twee. It's not a terrible piece of art (though the adult dragon is drawn a hell of a lot better than the babies, which seem... unobserved... like why not look at some baby animals for inspiration, instead of just going for generic cutesy?), but it's mega-twee. If there are a handful of pieces like that, it's no big deal, especially if there a similar amount of edgy or scary pieces.
But if that starts to move towards the predominant art style, I really strongly suspect that will be a key sign D&D is about to die again, because whilst that kind of art works pretty well with little kids and some younger teens, it usually utterly repulses older teenagers and early twenties types. And if you get a bunch of people quitting D&D when they're like 14 because it's uncool, that's going to cause a big player gap.
You've gotta keep some edge in there. Never go full edgelord, but never go full tweemaster either. 5E looks to be more in danger of the latter than the former right now.
