Lists of emperors

This is a list including all rulers who had carried the title of emperor or who ruled states generally regarded as empires in the constitutional or dynastic sense. It excludes rulers whose states are described as colonial empires solely because of their overseas possessions, such as the British, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese empires, unless they also held an explicit imperial title, as the British monarchs did through the title Emperor (or Empress) of India between 1876 and 1947. Some titles, such as “tsar” or “padishah”, could denote “emperor” in certain historical contexts, but did not always carry an imperial meaning. For example, “tsar” in the modern Kingdom of Bulgaria is generally understood as equivalent to “king” rather than “emperor”, while "padishah" in the Kingdom of Afghanistan is not generally regarded as an imperial title.