While this style is obviously clumsier for us to compose, it does avoid relying on the user understanding what the word variadic means. Searching through online documentation of the python *args parameter, the word variadic never comes up, the closest they get is "variable length argument". I realize that python is not SQL, but I think it's a good point of reference for what concepts the average reader is likely to know.
Looking at the patch, I think it is good, though I'd consider doing some indentation for the nested <optional>s to allow the author to do more visual tag-matching. The ']'s were sufficiently visually distinct that we didn't really need or want nesting, but <optional> is just another tag to my eyes in a sea of tags.
