Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah was the King of Nepal at that time. The King of Nepal was Nepal's head of state and monarch from 1768 to 2008 . He served as the head of the Nepalese monarchy. The monarchy was abolished on 28 May 2008 by the 1st Constituent Assembly. The Kingdom of Nepal was founded on 25 September 1768 by Prithvi Narayan Shah, a Gorkha king who succeeded in unifying the kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur into a single state under his Shah dynasty.