I just want to note that some of the listed game engines listed here are very small and/or dying.

Mixing multiple libraries together is probably not a good start for a beginner. I would advice a relatively complete library like SFML (you can look it up) or an actively used game engine like Unity.

But I think your question really depends on what you want. I myself started with GameMaker, which is a lot like Flash, but I liked more low-level things and the fun of coding with C++. But I can also imagine you could like having an engine to do all work for you, or use large libraries. These things, together with what language you would like to learn and/or know, are very important when making a decision about this.

I think you're overthinking it. If you see a nice engine with a good-looking tutorial for an engine, you should just try it out. As long as you have fun working with it, I would choose it, you can always learn more and other languages later. Just try starting here, nobody will argue that Unity is a bad game engine. If you don't like it, just try out some of the other engines listed here, or anywhere else! "Make games, not engines" (or something like that) seems to be a pretty popular article. I think an article called "use engines, don't discuss them" should also be written.