The King of the empire...
An empire, of course, needs a king, even in this strange age when the entire population professes faith in the Holy Light and the Vatican's power spans the entire world. The emperor is still an inevitable existence.
This isn't simply a matter of habit, nor is it the result of years of indoctrination by the ruling class.
It's because... people need to live.
Every life inevitably strives for survival, which requires food, resources, spiritual validation, self-awareness, and so on. In plain terms, humanity will inevitably pursue interests as a guideline, and in the process of pursuit, there needs to be conflict. With conflict, there will be groups; with groups, a balancer of interests at the human level is inevitably produced.
And so... the Emperor appears!
It is a societal inevitability that might take on different names and forms in different epochs, but it can never be erased.