an ambitious young upstart from a prominent Nepalese family, Jung Bahadur Rana, took advantage of inner turmoil within the Nepalese government and seized power in a coup. After orchestrating the Kot Massacre—a bloodbath in which he and his brothers trapped and killed some forty members of the court in the royal palace—he expelled King Rajendra Bikram Shah and assumed total control of the government, installing the king’s son Surendra Bikram in the throne as a powerless puppet of the new Rana regime.
