Alright. Got the L"" strings working and the tests are in. The GCC patch is about as done as the Clang one, and it has exception support too.

#include <embed>

#depend "MAINTAINERS"

int main () {
static constexpr std::span<const std::byte> data2 =
std::embed(L"MAINTAINERS", 3, 1);

static_assert(data2.size() == 1);
static_assert((unsigned char)(data2[0]) == 'e');

return (int)data2[0];
}