With the mass murder of the King of Nepal and nine other relatives last Friday apparently at the hands of a member of the family, Harvard lost two of its most illustrious alumni.

The Nepalese king, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, was a Quincy House resident and member of the Fox during a one-year stay at the College in 1967. His son-in-law, Khagda “K.B.” Shah, who was also killed, lived in Kirkland House on a Nieman fellowship in 1979.

Harvard provided a space for the two men to receive Western educations before they returned to an impoverished country on the way to modernization.

“[Crown prince Birendra] really had very little freedom, but they wanted him to have as much of a normal life at Harvard as possible,” says Katalin M. Kovago ’70, a good friend. “He was a nice, good-humored young man with a lot of responsibility on his shoulders.”

Shah Dev, as he liked to be called, spent all his time at Harvard accompanied by a bodyguard and tutor, Narayan Shrestha.

Both were generally well-liked, although Shrestha is described as the more outgoing of the two.

“Narayan was very voluble, very charming. Not that Shah Dev wasn’t, he was just more reserved and cautious,” says Boaz Shatton ’69, a friend from the Fox.

Despite his popularity, Shrestha’s role as Dev’s protector was apparent.