Why go
The valley’s three former Malla kingdoms became part of a larger state after Shah’s conquest. Their royal centers belong to an earlier chapter; Rana rule and later movements challenged how the larger kingdom was governed. The sequence helps place those older courts in a wider national story.
The full story
In the mid-eighteenth century, Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of Gorkha, began building a larger kingdom. His campaigns brought the Kathmandu Valley under his control after sieges and battles, including at Kirtipur. The former Malla capitals of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur then belonged to a state whose center and reach were changing. That is the key turn to remember when viewing their older royal spaces. The kingdom expanded beyond the valley, then lost territory after war with the East India Company in the early nineteenth century. Power later shifted within the court: following the upheaval of 1846, the Rana family came to dominate government while kings remained. In the twentieth century, political movements pressed for representative rule, with gains and reversals under the monarchy. The civil conflict and protests of the early 2000s preceded the monarchy’s end in 2008. These phases explain why Nepal’s royal past includes both the valley’s competing courts and a later countrywide kingdom.