Short answer, yes.

Since you asked about the Roman Empire, we can start from there.

The most famous example of Rome taking similar actions is likely Armenia, which served as an important buffer state between Rome and Iran (first the Parthians, later the Sassanids). For centuries, Armenia oscillated between existence and non-existence, near sovereignty to being a client state, and everything in between. Under Tigranes II, Armenia briefly spread from sea to shining sea, reaching from the Mediterranean all the way to the Caspian (and almost the Black sea.) However, Rome crushed the kingdom and turned it into a client state, carving away its conquests. Decades later, Artavasdes II would be executed by Cleopatra (yes, that Cleopatra) and his son Artaxes II would flee to Parthia, where he requested assistance from the Parthian King who proceeded to invade Armenia and install him on the throne. Under Artaxes, Armenia was a Parthian ally, a situation that remained until Armenian nobles, discontent with his rule, wrote to Rome and requested that Augustus depose him and replace him. Augustus agreed, but the Armenian nobles managed to kill Artaxes before the Roman army was necessary; that being said, the Romans still placed their preferred candidate (Tigranes III) on the throne, thereby making Armenia a Roman client again. This was the story of Armenia for a very long time, and one could go on and on.

This is a pretty common pattern in history. Countries both great and small would often have factions from foreign powers intervening in order to get their desired outcome. As we saw above, Rome and Parthia regularly intervened in Armenia in order to obtain their desired outcome.

To give another country, perhaps one more recent, let's look at Spain prior to empire-hood. Under Isabella and Ferdinand, Spain became a global empire and formed the basis of what we consider Spain to be today. But that was not always the case. In fact, Isabella was in a very precarious situation when she was succeeding the throne. Upon succession, she faced a civil war (The War of Castilian Succession) from supporters of Joanna 'la Beltraneja.' In this war, Aragon sided with Isabella while Portugal sided with Joanna.

But that was not predestined and the sides of the conflict could very well have been flipped. You see, Isabella had a choice; she needed a partner, and both Aragon and Portugal had viable suitors. As you no doubt know, she chose Ferdinand and in doing so, chose Aragon. This led a faction of Portuguese-supporting nobles in Castile to declare support for Joanna as the rightful queen. King Afonso of Portugal then married Joanna (shocker). Portugal's failure in the war meant Aragon and Castile would stay joined at the hip and that is how we got the basis for our modern Spain. Otherwise, Spain could mean something very different today.

To give every example ever known to man would take a lifetime. However, one last example I would give is the British Empire. Now at this point, we're starting to reach modernity but the British empire frequently intervened in foreign states in order to create clients, friendly governments, etc. For example, Britain intervened in Afghanistan to turn it into a buffer state (against the Russians.) Upon an anti-British ruler being placed on the throne, the British again went to war in 1878 (the second Anglo-Afghan War). They won, placed their preferred candidate on the throne (a bit more complicated than that but that was the eventual outcome) and annexed a significant chunk of Afghanistan. I would say that fits the bill, wouldn't you?

Edit: Persia -> Iran because Parthia was not a Persian power.