Help me figure out the name of this SciFi book series

Ok. Some friends and I were talking books over lunch and a book series came up but no one could remember the name of any of the books or the series. And it’s…driving…me…nuts!

So, here is the plot. The book is about an Emperor who is essentially immortal. Basically he continuously uploads his mind and memories to a secure cloning facility so every time he gets killed the machines automatically produce a clone of him and upload his mind and memories up to the point he was last killed…then he comes out and it’s as if he never died. Other things I remember from the books is that before this guy becomes Emperor he discovered some place where he can get access too almost unlimited amounts of anti-matter. His entire fortune and the empire itself is based on this guys exclusive access to this extremely valuable material. Also, the books didn’t really focus so much on the Emperor himself (he was of course a character but more for background until the last book IIRC), but on another character who was a soldier in the guard. Also in the last book something goes wrong with the machines and the last Emperor is flawed…basically insane.

Can anyone help out here? Two of the 5 folks at lunch had read the series (LONG ago) but no one could remember even one of the book titles (I don’t even remember how many books there were anymore).

-XT

Sounds vaguely like “Harvest of Stars” by Poul Anderson. I never made it all the way through the book, much less any others in the series, if there were any. But one of the main characters is essentially the downloaded consciousness of a former leader, who is still in power even though he’s dead. (If that makes sense.) The “bad guys” in the story have stolen a backup of the download and brainwashed it to fit their ends and have taken over the government by placing it in power. The true copy of the leader is more or less on the run and being smuggled around by some government underling. I don’t remember anything about his wealth being in the form of unlimited anti-matter so this is probably not what you’re looking for.

Sounds close but pretty sure that’s not it.

-XT

It’s the Sten series by Alan Cole and Chris Bunch.

Woohoo! That’s it! Thanks.

-XT