Is There an Empire Without Its Emperor?

The one thing that kind of ties them all together is that people in it believe that the empire is important and needs to stick around. You're more passion project empires, like Alexander's Empire or Napoleon's Empire,. When they go away, then there's no more reason to have an empire anymore. Going back to my favorite example of Star Wars, the empire exists and dies with Palpatine. It is no longer the empire when he's gone. It is warlords into the first order. What is an empire without its emperor? Precisely An ire.