I never understood why there wasn't adopted a simpler solution, having bytes like: 0xxxxxxx the backward-compatible ASCII range 1xxxxxxx means thi

I never understood why there wasn't adopted a simpler solution, having bytes like: 0xxxxxxx the backward-compatible ASCII range 1xxxxxxx means this doesn't stand alone, but is followed by another one (or more) complementary byte(s). This way, the ASCII range would be defined like the "first order", and the 1xxxxxxx 0xxxxxxx would be the "2nd order" character range and so on! 1xxxxxxx 1xxxxxxx ... 0xxxxxxx as N-bytes length sequence would form the "Nth order" character range (with an extensible N, of course). This kind of encoding would have accommodated any range! If I am missing something, I'm all ears.