What do you think about readlink returning something like:

class Link(str):
  print_name = None  # type: str | None

  @property
  def friendly_name(self) -> str:
    return self.print_name or self

os.readlink would always return one of these Link objects, and since it's a substr, it would behave the way it currently behaves, but with an additional property. This approach would expose the underlying duality of the "name" of a link or junction, such that tools that need a friendly name could use .friendly_name and tools that need to inspect the print name could do that... but for the cases that wish for the most precise target could use the default value.