King Gyanendra of Nepal assumed the throne in dramatic circumstances in 2001 after his brother, King Birendra, was killed in a palace massacre.  In May 2002 King Gyanendra dissolved Parliament. Immediately after ascending the throne in June 2001, King Gyanendra sought to make his future role clear.  He said he would not be a silent king like his brother, who agreed to be a constitutional monarch following a people's uprising in 1990.  In October 2002 he dismissed the pliable Prime Minister Deuba and his Council of Ministers for 'incompetence'. In the same month he postponed indefinitely the general elections that were to be held later that year.  He then appointed three governments on whim, and cynically and illegally sacked them all.

On 4 October 2002, King Gyanendra made his first direct move to run the country under the cover of Article 127 of the Constitution, which allows him to “issue necessary orders” to remove “any difficulty” “in connection with the implementation of the Constitution.” Under this cover, the king sacked Deuba’s government, assumed all executive authority and appointed his own cabinet and a prime minister to run the administration. The takeover was blatantly illegal.
Under Article 36(1) of the 1990 Constitution, the king can only appoint the leader of the majority party in parliament as Prime Minister. In the absence of a clear majority and the failure of political agreement on a coalition government, the king is required to dissolve the parliament and to hold fresh elections within six months. Article 127 requires that the king’s orders to remove “any difficulty” “in connection with the implementation” of the constitution “shall be laid before parliament”. But there was no parliament, having already been dissolved by Deuba. The illegal emergency regime, with the king remaining its executive head, made a ceasefire agreement with the Maoists in January 2003 and carried out open negotiations with their leaders over the next seven months. The peace talks ultimately broke down in August 2003 as the Maoists refused to give up their demand for a constituent assembly and the government tried to militarily destroy their organization even as the façade of negotiations was on.

The massacre of 19 Maoist sympathizers carried out by the Royal Nepal Army on 17 August 2003 at Doramba, even as the government representatives and the Maoists leaders were talking peace at Dang, has been exhaustively documented by the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal and other international human rights organizations. The incident epitomizes the brutality, lawlessness and total impunity with which the Nepali regime aims to stamp out the unrest in the country.  King Gyanendra extensively toured the country giving speeches about making people the first priority in politics. In February 2004, he famously said the "days of monarchy being seen but not heard... are over".  Many people soon doubted his promises, particularly when he announced a six-fold increase in the royal household budget and began consolidating his authority.

On 1 February 2005, he imposed a state of Emergency in the country invoking Article 27(3) of the Nepalese Constitution which enjoins the King to "preserve and protect this Constitution by keeping in view the best interests and welfare of the people of Nepal."  The king's ostensible reason for the royal coup was that successive administrations had not done enough to end the Maoist rebellion. Supporters of an absolute monarchy in Nepal had been pressing for him to deal directly with the crisis. It was the first royal takeover since Nepal abolished absolute monarchy and elected its first prime minister in 1991.  King Gyanendra had consistently denied before his coup that he was exercising executive power himself.

King Gyanendra did not hesitate to destroy Nepal or Nepal's Constitution in order to 'protect' it. The Constitution that he left in tatters had come into being in 1990 during the reign of the assassinated King Birendra Shah, and was the basis of the general elections of 1991, 1994 and 1999. Unfortunately, elections brought no political or economic stability and the country saw nine governments in 10 years. This period also witnessed strengthening of Maoist insurgency that threw economic life in Nepal into serious disarray, created a sense of fear and insecurity throughout the land, and gained control of nearly 80% of Nepal's territory. The violent activities of the insurgents and savage reprisals by the Royal Nepalese Army have caused the death of an estimated 13,000 Nepalese so far.