Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (Nepali: ज्ञानेन्द्र वीर विक्रम शाह देव; born 7 July 1947) is a former monarch and the last King of Nepal, reigning from 2001 to 2008. As a child, he was briefly king from 1950 to 1951, when his grandfather, Tribhuvan, took political exile in India with the rest of his family. His second reign began after the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre. Gyanendra Shah is the first person in the history of Nepal to be king twice and the last king of the Shah dynasty of Nepal.
Gyanendra's second reign was marked by constitutional turmoil. His brother King Birendra had established a constitutional monarchy in which he delegated policy to a representative government. The growing insurgency of the Nepalese Civil War during Gyanendra's reign interfered with the elections of representatives. After several delays in elections, Gyanendra suspended the constitution and assumed direct authority in February 2005, asserting that it would be a temporary measure to suppress the Maoist insurgency after civil governments had failed to do so. In the face of broad opposition, he restored the previous parliament in April 2006. He was deposed two years later by the first session of the Constituent Assembly, which declared the nation to be the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal and abolished the 240-year-old Shah dynasty. (Full article...)