Growing up in Rhodesia had something to do with it: we were a white society making an economic success of a country, firmly in control, sure of ourselves; then facing a war we ultimately could not win, forced to give way to black rule, to reassess all our assumptions or sink into a futile bitterness. We reassessed.
The fall of Rome was a lot like that. The new barbarian rulers were not civilised like the Romans, however they did not try to destroy the imperial civilisation, but rather adapted it and adapted to it until they produced the culture of the Middle Ages.
There are idiosyncracies about this period that are unique. For example, the fact that the Western Imperial army survived the official fall of the Western Empire by nearly a century. Procopius, writing in the middle of the 6th century, describes Roman military units in the west that still guarded their old forts, passing on their traditions, standards, fighting methods, even clothing style, from father to son. Now is that a theme for a novel or what?
Anyone else here interested in the same period? It is contemporaneous with Arthur, though I think events on the mainland were much more dynamic (and far fuller of consequences for Western civilisation) than what was happening in Britain. Just my opinion.
