A life of splendour and opulence could soon be over for Nepal's King Gyanendra, with the country's monarchy facing abolition after landmark elections today.

His Royal Highness Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev is one of a kind - the world's last Hindu king.

But the controversial monarch, who seized absolute power three years ago, looks set to be the last ruler from the Himalayan nation's 238-year-old Shah dynasty.

And there aren't too many subjects weeping tears at the prospect, says Kathmandu newspaper editor Kunda Dixit.

"I think it's the end of the road. The joke two years ago was that the biggest republican in the country was King Gyanendra himself," Mr Dixit said.

"I think a lot of people, as elections come around, are now seeing the monarchy not as a symbol of unity but as a symbol of division in this country and that as long as there is this very ambitious king around, that we'll never really have peace."

King Gyanendra is the accidental king. He came to the throne in 2001 when his drug and booze-fuelled nephew massacred the king and most of the royal family.

After that inauspicious start to a new reign, things worsened when King Gyanendra sacked the Government and imposed direct rule in 2005.

The king claimed the commoners had failed to end the war with the country's Maoist guerilla movement. But he ended up at war with his own subjects, who eventually forced him into a climb down.

Once parliament was restored, politicians did King Gyanendra slowly. Mr Dixit says the king has done this to himself.

"Not just to himself, but to the institution of monarchy. First of all by trying to be an autocratic king at a time when modern monarchs should be in the background and sort of steering things, if at all having a hand politics," he said.

"He wanted absolute power. His hatred for the political process and democracy was so deep that he wanted it all for himself."

On his way down, King Gyanendra experienced a few humiliations. He has been made to pay tax, had his face taken off the currency, and forced to live without as many servants at the palace.

In these apparently dying days of the last Hindu king's reign, there are lurid tales of Gyanendra sheltering behind the big pink wall of the Kathmandu palace surrounded by astrologers, counting his money and plotting an escape by a helicopter kept permanently fuelled up on the front lawn.

That he even has a helicopter at his disposal irks some of his subjects, who get to have their say today on whether King Gyanendra is indeed the last king of Nepal.

- Adapted from a story first aired on AM, April 10.