@thomas.beale, has Graphite investigetad if GQL (or Neo4J’s related Cypher) has the same limitations? It seems to be partly another kind of tool/language. See GQL links in e.g. EHRs with different system_id in the same server? - #37 by erik.sundvall
(Adding syntactic sugar shortcuts to GQL like AQL did to Xpaths would create what I tentatively would call AGQL 
- see Update March 31 below)
[Update March 20: I found these two sources informative and full of context regarding GQL, Cypher and the standardisation process
GQL: The ISO standard for graphs has arrived | AWS Database Blog
…and…
Introduction to Graph Query Languages. From SPARQL to Gremlin.]
[Update March 31: Adding text for context from a previous not openly available post:
GQL (Graph Query Language - Wikipedia) seems to finally have been made a standard now. If it is/becomes well supported by graph databases, then I was thinkning that perhaps some Archetype-based syntactic sugar on top of GQL (could be called AGQL) and simple preporocessing/translation of the query might do the trick without us having to reeinvent any new wheel or stretch AQL’s tree-focused view too far. With syntactic sugar I mean simplifications like AQL paths have done to xPath in the form of .../attributename[at0123]/...]
Sorry for going off topic.