> Did The Romans leave England governable when they pulled out? I think yes.
Would knowing that pretty much all trace of Roman rule, down to the material cultures and currency, completely vanished within a generation change your mind? Of all of the the Roman Empire, England saw the most severe, and most abrupt, fall in living conditions. And this is centuries before the Vikings wreaked yet more havoc on the region.
And, for what it's worth, while we don't know that much about what the remnant Breton polities looked like, the Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms that replaced them were a variety of small kingdoms that constantly jostled each other for power, until the Vikings destroyed several of them outright and the Wessex King Albert conquered the rest. That's pretty damn close to the notion of an array of warlords jostling for power that you seem to be categorizing as ungovernable.
Would knowing that pretty much all trace of Roman rule, down to the material cultures and currency, completely vanished within a generation change your mind? Of all of the the Roman Empire, England saw the most severe, and most abrupt, fall in living conditions. And this is centuries before the Vikings wreaked yet more havoc on the region.
And, for what it's worth, while we don't know that much about what the remnant Breton polities looked like, the Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms that replaced them were a variety of small kingdoms that constantly jostled each other for power, until the Vikings destroyed several of them outright and the Wessex King Albert conquered the rest. That's pretty damn close to the notion of an array of warlords jostling for power that you seem to be categorizing as ungovernable.