Who’s big brother (or sister) was the biggest tyrant?
My brother was 5 years older than me and he just loved to walk by and punch me for no reason whatsoever, just for the joy of inflicting pain on someone and calling me a sissy if I complained.
Three older brothers. No single one of them was too bad, but put 'em together as a pack, and my life was hell.
Their favorite stunt? That’d be holding me down, stripping off my shirt, smearing my face and chest with peanut butter and calling the dog into the room.
I’ve made certain they all know that a side effect of being older and bigger than me is that they’ll be old and feeble while I still have a few good years left. Then we’ll see how much fun the peanut butter trick is! 
My sister was 10 years older than me, and my early childhood was miserable and frightening thanks to her. She was (and still is at 54!!) prone to loud and violent temper-tantrums that scared the willies out of me, the rest of the family and (during one particularly nasty phase of her life) the local community as well.
I have nothing to do with her now. My parents still see her, and I get reports from them that alternate between:
a) Oh, but she’s changed now, and she was as sweet as pie last week.
b) She’s still a freakin’ lunatic and she chucked a wobbly at a restaurant before throwing some punches at her husband on the way out.
I think she is past the ‘growing out of it’ phase somehow. 
My mother was (is) 10 years older than her “surprise baby” brother. Mind you, this was back in the days when it was acceptable for a 10 or 11 year old to babysit an infant. As soon as their parents left, and all night while they were gone, she’d lean over his crib and coo to him her favorite little song:
“Mommy and Daddy left you
Mommy and Daddy hate you
Mommy and Daddy left you
And they’re never coming back!”
Well, I have an older brother that was a big enough bully that I no longer speak to him.
He dosen’t understand why.
My oldest sister is 3 years older than me.
She beat the crap out of me every chance she got. She made fun of me in front of my friends and actually - anyone else within hearing range. She would do things like walk up behind me while I was looking out a window and smack the back my knees so they’d slam into the wall. She chased my other sister around the house with a hammer (claw end up). She used to get her friends to gang up on me. They would pin me to the bed and give me a wedgie so bad it would make my asscrack bleed. She pulled my hair. She called me fat (for the record, she wears a size 12 in girls so anyone is fat compared to her). She told me I was ugly and that I was adopted (I’m the only redhead in the family). She made my life miserable. Because of her, I grew up thinking I was fat and ugly and that no one actually liked me.
My middle sister is 18 months older than me. She once chased me out of the house while holding a large knife. I was only wearing my underpants and a t-shirt. She then locked me out of the house - during a blizzard. I put my fist through a window so I could get back in. She blocked my way in. When I asked her to at least give me some hot soapy water to soak my bloody hand in, she gave me a steaming pot of ammonia and water.
Despite all that - my sisters and I managed to overcome our differences by the time I was 16. We are friends now and I love them. I’m sometimes still amazed that I managed to forgive them for the shit they put me through. But, the past is the past and I understand that they were seriously fu*cked up as kids and teenagers.
I’m the oldest of 5 - I have 3 sisters and a brother - and despite hearing my parents for years say: “You’re the oldest, you should set the example…” I didn’t take it out on my sibs. Even when I won a contest and my mom made me share my winnings with the other 2 (at the time) so they wouldn’t feel left out. Even when I found a quarter (that was big money in 1960) and Mom made me share it with the other 2.
Worst I did was yell at my sister (15 months younger than I) loud enough to make her cry. I immediately felt bad. I still feel bad, and it’s now 40 years later. So there are a few of us who weren’t tyrants.
Now, my brother, who’s 30 months younger, had his moments. Like the time he threw a handful of sand in my face… I was washing it out of my eyes for hours. But he wasn’t so much of a bully as a brat. And he did get over it.
Oh, and as for setting the example, I left home at 19 and joined the Navy. Over the next 32 years, I lived near home once for 2 years - most of the rest of the time I lived several hundred miles away. Guess how many sibs followed my example. Just guess…
I was the oldest child, and not much of a tyrant. (Well, not a physically abusive one, anyway. I did tease mercilessly.) But my best friend in childhood had two older brothers. The younger of the two’s treatment of his little sister verged on psychopathic.
Both her parents worked, but I was allowed to go over to her house to play after school because her brothers were there to supervise us. Her big brother, C, was really sweet, especially to me, so we felt safe if he was there because he would stop the psycho, P, from picking on us. But if P was the only one there, he would often chase both his sister and me around the house, and give his sister a real pounding if he caught her. I don’t remember him actually ever beating on me, but he made convincing threats to do so on a regular basis. Actually, he probably would have beat me up, too, if I hadn’t hidden behind the couch while he smacked my friend around.
Once, my mom hired P to babysit me and my three younger sisters. We found this out about 15 minutes before she was due to walk out the door. I guess I never really told her about P’s crazed behavior. I about wet my pants with fear at the idea of being left alone with him all night. Mom figured he wouldn’t do anything to us, so she didn’t cancel.
I locked my sisters and myself up in my bedroom the entire night.
Christ, I’d forgotten all about that.
“Who’s the tough guy now, Vinny?”
my older sister used to tie me up all the time. yikes…