The 5c was my favorite iPhone ever!
I think I have this more or less right, but Apple has almost always had a "new hotness" phone alongside a "last year's chip" phone:
5S and 5C
6 and 5S
6S and 6
7 and 6S
8 and 7
X and 8
XS and XC
11 and XS and XC
12 and 11 (and XC?)
It's only recently that they have had two different new-chip models: 12 pro and 12, 13 pro and 13. Having the 14 be last year's chip and the 14 pro be the new chip is a return to what has been normal, not just a copy of the 5S/5c year. What has really changed is the branding. You could look at, say, the year of the 7 and the 6S. Nothing about that branding suggests that the 6S should have the same chip as the 7. Now we have 14 and 14 pro. That they use the same number suggests that they SHOULD have the same chip, and that "pro" should mean other stuff on top of that. And that's what they did the last two years, which frankly surprised me a lot. But "normal" for Apple has historically been selling one with this year's chip, one with last year's.
EDIT: Oops, I mean XR, not XC.
