Stemming the tide

Youngest child: Daddy! I can't sleep. Will you tell me a story?
Daddy: Of course. Love to.
[Pause]
YC: Come on then.
Daddy: Hang on. I'm trying to find Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
YC: Oh no, please. Not that one. It gives me the creeps in more ways than I have time to explain.
Daddy: To be fair, I know what you mean. So. What's it to be?
YC: Well, I did say "tell" not "read". Would you tell me a story? Remember it. Maybe even make it up. At least embellish on one half-remembered from your own childhood. Like a proper parent.
[Pause]
YC: Well?
Daddy: Em...ok. I don't see why not.
[Pause]
YC: Well?
Daddy: Hang on. I'm thinking.
[Pause]
Daddy: Did you have one in mind?
YC: Can it be ANY story in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD?
Daddy: Of course it can.
YC: Oh BRILLIANT! My most favourite story in the whole wide world is the one about that man. That man from a land by the sea. That powerful man. Powerful, but not as powerful as he thought he was or wanted others to think he was. That man who was so puffed up and carried away with his own sense of self-importance that he lost touch with reality. He was so silly that he thought he could stop things from happening when he couldn't stop them at all. He thought he was so powerful that he could stop things over which he simply had no control. Not just no control, in fact. Not even any influence. But still, he said he would stop them. Insisted that he could, and would, stop them.  And when he did say he would stop those things, and when he did try, everyone could see how silly he was and they laughed and laughed at him. Laughed and laughed.
Daddy: Ah! I like that one too. But do you know? The funny thing is that actually King Canute didn't think he could stop the sea. He knew that he couldn't. He was commanding it to stop so as to show his courtiers that there were limits to what even a King could command.
[Pause]
YC: No. Not that silly, deluded man from a land by the sea who everyone knows isn't as powerful as he thinks and who threatens to do things he simply doesn't have the power to do. The other one. Carwyn Jones.