Steam and xbox accounts

Someone please help me out.
I have a Steam account that i have purchased microtransactions on PoE1 and have obtained a early access supporter pack and play PoE2.

I perfer this account, and would like it to remain my main. Thus so, i have set it as my primary account when making my account here on the website. I also habe an xbox and i am very interested in doing the cross play. I am aware i need to purchase a new access key to play on the xbox. But my concern is, i think i habe an old profile on PoE1 on my xbox gamertag.

i know these can be linked via sub accounts.
so my question is. could i just not use that account?
do i need to link this account to my steam one in order to play PoE2 cross play?
can i just put my steam account on the xbox version of my PoE2?
i am not clear on the mechanics here. i feel this confusion of the PoE1 pre exsiting accounts can be a cluster to deal with.

last part. could i play PoE2 coss play on my xbox with my steam accout, and have the pre exsiting PoE1 account on my xbox seperate?

Did you ever receive a reply, or could solve your issue? I just linked Steam- and Xbox accounts, but I am not able to access my characters from Steam on Xbox. I followed some advice in another thread that proposed to start a new character on Xbox and play until the first town. After that you should be able to see a drop-down interface on the character selection screen, and from there choose the Steam account also on Xbox. Alas, that did not work for me either. (Edit: create new *character*, not new account)