well, it distances itself even more from Lament of Innocence. if you were compelled to follow the dots, there's an extra generation between him and Leon Belmont. also who knows, Leon might exist in this continuum in a different form and they thought it would work out better this way? i'm starting to think of the LoS timeline as basically a copy and paste job of the original timeline and then they overwrite the details of it as they see fit as they go along.
maybe the year 1022 isn't actually the year the game takes place in, but rather the year that the spell that separated heaven and earth was performed or that Gabriel was born/found, and they just didn't bother to tell us to "fast forward" to Gabriel's current predicament.