This paper deals with the section of Chronikè Diéghesis that Niketas Cho-niates devoted to the Byzantine emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (1183-1185). According to the author, the emperor could be regarded as a wild and bloody tyrant. This image became a sort of tyrant‘s model for some western political thinkers such as Egnatius, Bodin and Crucé. The analysis focuses on the political metaphors used to describe the politics of Andronikos in or-der to explain his political project. Although Niketas was a fierce opponent of Andronikos‘s government, considering the emperor a cruel tyrant and criti-cizing his regime of terror, he gives a complex and not only negative judg-ment about him.