Birendra of Nepal

Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (Nepali: वीरेन्द्र वीर विक्रम शाह देव; 29 December 1945 – 1 June 2001) was the King of Nepal from 1972 until his assassination in the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre. Birendra was the first son of King Mahendra and crown princess Indra. He inherited the panchayat system from his father when he acceded the throne in 1972, ruling as Nepal's absolute monarch. Following the 1990 revolution, he disbanded the system, lifted the concurrent ban on political parties and promulgated a new constitution in which he served as head of state of a democratic constitutional monarchy. The Nepalese Civil War began in the latter part of his reign when the Communist Party of Nepal launched an insurgency in 1996.