> Was there a reason a second pattern had to be added vs. just being able to use a single italic pattern?

No technical reason, just couldn't find a nicer way to write the composite regex than this (which is just an or of the two rules):

```
'(?<=^)(\\*[^\\s\\*][^\\*]*\\*)|(?<=\\s)(\\*[^\\*]+\\*)'
```

Thinking about this again, I probably optimized for readability a bit too much. I'll merge it back into one pattern -- thanks for pointing this out