King Amalric gave him the lordship of Beirut. Andronicus then eloped with another niece, Theodora, the widow of King Baldwin III. The couple passed between various Muslim courts, before being pardoned and permitted to return to Byzantium.
On the death of Emperor Manuel in 1180, a power struggle ensued in Constantinople, for control of the boy king Alexios II. Initially the regency fell to the Frankish Empress Maria (of Antioch) and her lover the Protesbatos Alexios. Opposition to the regency focussed on Maria the Porphygenita, (Manuel’s daughter by his first marriage) and her Frankish husband Renier. After being implicated in a plot to murder the Protesbatos Alexios, they found themselves besieged in the cathedral Hagia Sophia.
They managed to send out an appeal to Andronicus, then Lord of Pontos. In 1182, he took an army to Constantinople, and seized power. Thus began a reign of terror that would have disastrous consequences for Byzantium. Driven by a desire to avenge perceived wrongs inflicted by his cousin Manuel, Andronicus began to slaughter his family and supporters. Maria of Antioch was strangled with a bow string, soon followed by the young Emperor Alexios II. For good measure Andronicus also poisoned Maria the Porphygenita and Renier. Of the family only Alexios II’s French wife Agnes was spared, who Andronicus took for his own, despite being 50 years older than she.
Meanwhile many officials of state and other civil servants were also murdered. Manuel’s loyal advisor Constantine Mardoukas was impaled on a stake. The inhabitants of Nicea and other cities in Asia Minor, who had not supported Andronicus’s rise to power, were impaled by the hundred. Next Andronicus presided over a massacre of Latins living in Constantinople, making the Italian traders particular scapegoats (rather as Stalin had the Kulaks). Women and children were also killed, as were the sick in a pilgrim Hospital belonging to the Knights of St John. All this earned the Greeks an evil reputation in the west (despite subsequent attempts to repair relations) and paved the way for the attack on Constantinople by the 4th Crusade, which the Venetians in particular regarded as revenge.
Andronicus ended up being tortured to death by a mob loyal to his successor Isaac Angelus. Isaab himself would later fall victim to a palace coup, being deposed and blinded, later briefly being restored to the throne by the 4th Crusade. The culture of political violence and teror had been largely unleashed by Andronicus.
, it is well worth a "bump" to give it a new lease on life! 
He always have a dream to be the Emeror of Byzantine Empire. Sometimes dreams come true!
