When empire is growing, the special people are usually highly qualified for their position. But empire isn't a free market - its very zero sum. Something must be destroyed to grow empire. A peaceful but growing empire consumes the natural world until it becomes cost prohibitive to do so ; then it can either turn to consuming resources (people are resources) outside its borders or it can consume the people inside its borders, which you see in diminishing rights and diminishing property ownership among regular people. Widespread use of debt is the same. Kings don't typically want to be emperors - their job is to protect the people from the deprivations of the oligarchs - but the oligarchs force empire on the king. Historically, most European monarchies became democracies after the assembly of oligarchs literally blackbagged the king and held him hostage. **_Then_** you get the central banks and the crazy wars. The kings were not warlike enough to satisfy the oligarchs. The veneer of democracy is specifically to replace the love of the king, the protector of people, so that the state can become a war machine.