Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev was the last king of Nepal. He reigned from 1950 to 1951 and again from 2001 to 2008, when the Kingdom of Nepal was abolished and a republic declared.
At a young age of three, Gyanendra was briefly declared king by the Rana regime after his grandfather Tribhuvan and his family fled to India. During his brother Birendra's reign, he served as chairman of the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation.
Gyanendra's second reign, which began as a result of the Nepalese royal massacre, was characterised by constitutional upheaval. The growing insurgency of the Nepalese Civil War disrupted representative elections.