The research of terms denoting emotions is the main approach for the study of notions about human feelings that existed in the past. Because of the peculiarities of the ancient Russian book culture, we cannot find thorough and detailed descriptions related to the experiences of people in the works of that period. However, those texts contain emotive vocabulary. Exactly its analysis is especially important for understanding the ideas about the emotions of the Middle Ages. The analysis of the emotive language of fear shows, however, that the authors of the Tale of Bygone Years not only and not so much sought to express the feeling of their characters’ fear, but created the characteristics of the characters of the chronicle with the help of emotives. The article analyses the stories of the Tale of Bygone Years about the princes that contain lexemes of fear. Particular attention is paid to the usage contexts of the discovered emotives. The key result of the analysis presented that chroniclers used the emotive language of fear for the moral characterization of princes. The mention of this emotion marks the characters as villains and defines their actions as unrighteous. Fearlessness is as a positive characteristic of princes. Therefore, the emotive language of fear in the chronicle narrative primarily plays a symbolic role and becomes an important element of the evaluation that chroniclers give to their characters.