Pushing text changes to instances of a component that uses nested components

I have a menu component that is built from instances of a link component. The link component has the usual variants (default, selected, etc).
I’m using instances of the menu component across the page in different views. In each view I have applied the selected state to a different link.
When I update the copy of the links in the menu component it gets updated in the instances BUT not for the links for which I have applied the selected state previously.
In order to update the copy for all instances I need to reset all changes for the instances and then apply the selected states again.
What am I missing, why don’t the text updates get pushed to the nested instances?

I have been under the impression that applying text properties to the text layers in the link component should help in this case. In fact it does not.
Applying text variables to the text layers of instances of the link component in the menu component actually seems to work though. But it seems like a too complicated setup for such a simple thing.