Zelensky shows me that charismatic leaders can, indeed, spring forth to defend a nation.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/king-arthur-real-person-180980466/

At a time when most Britons were struggling to find cooking utensils,
Tintagel’s inhabitants were using crucibles to forge metal, inscribing
slabs with Celtic writing, and controlling agricultural production
across substantial territory. The settlement would have been well
defended against the marauding bands that plagued the mainland: Geoffrey
of Monmouth noted that just a handful of warriors positioned at the
narrow neck could have staved off an army. It is not difficult to
envision a charismatic leader rising here to defend northern Cornwall
from Saxon invaders, says Scutt, or to imagine that his feats would
enter sixth-century folklore and be passed down by storytellers to
Geoffrey and other chroniclers. “We know this was a center of power,” he
says. “But whose power was it? It’s always going to remain a mystery.”

I'm rereading "A History of the world in 100 objects" by Neil MacGregor, previously Director of the British Museum. The author is delightfully scholarly and funny. I had to stop in disbelief and consult history online when he described the Vale of York hoard. Although many will scoff at my entertaining the belief that King Arthur, the dux bellorum, threw out out Viking and German invaders around 500 AD Mr MacGregor shocked me with the news that around 900 AD was when a different warrior king accomplished this. And he was an Anglo Saxon - exactly the people that King Arthur worked to defeat. MacGregor says that "Kiev and York were both Viking cities." That "Vikings captured people to sell as slaves in the great market of Kiev. .. which explains why in so many European languages the words for slave and slav are still closely connected."

King Arthur still casts a lovely light in me, but that the invaders he worked so long to defeat wound up saving the nation is a sad adjustment.