is there a sane mercurial tree graph visualisation tool
I've seen the questions here and there and they don't have any real answer. While those graphs might be "topologically identical", I would really like my trees to show commits in order they actually happened.
There isn't such a tool to my knowledge, but you're wrong that the questions you link to "don't have any real answer". As explained in two answers to the second question you link to, you can get the behavior you want by cloning your repository in such a way that the changesets are recorded in chronological order. This answer (by myself) shows how to do it automatically. It's a clone, not history editing, so you can use it with shared repositories.
It's not as simple as using a different GUI, but consider that a hypothetical tool with the behavior you want would probably have other shortcomings. Stick to your favorite GUI and adjust the repo instead.