> You can't load an integer from an unaligned address.

You can, and the results are machine specific, clearly defined and well-documented. Ancient ARM raises an exception, modern ARM and x86 can do it with a performance penalty. It's only the C or C++ layer that is allowed to translate the code into arbitrary garbage, not the CPU.

Sure you can. In many architectures it works just fine. Works perfectly in x86_64, for example. It's just a little slower.

Unless your code targets some exotic architecture, like idk x86.

You missed the point: the pointer existing as a value of that type at all is UB, even if you never try to access anything through it and no corresponding machine code is ever emitted.