Buckingham Palace has refused to return the body of an Ethiopian prince buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th century.
A descendant of Prince Alemayehu – an orphan who was adored and financially supported by Queen Victoria and died aged 18 – has demanded that his remains be returned to Ethiopia.
But Buckingham Palace has maintained that removing the body would affect others buried in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
The palace said chapel authorities empathize with the need to honor Prince Alemayehu’s memory, but added that they also “have a responsibility to preserve the dignity of the departed.”
It confirmed that the Royal Family has granted “requests from Ethiopian delegations to visit the chapel” in the past.
Buckingham Palace has refused to return the body of Ethiopian Prince Alemayehu, who was buried in Windsor Castle in the 19th century.
A descendant of Prince Alemayehu – an orphan who was adored and financially supported by Queen Victoria and died aged 18 – has demanded his remains be returned to Ethiopia
Prince Alemayehu was brought to England after his father, Emperor Tewodros II, committed suicide in 1868 when British troops stormed his mountaintop palace in northern Ethiopia.
The seven-year-old orphan was adored by Queen Victoria and educated at Sandhurst Military Academy. But he died of pneumonia at the age of 18 in 1879 and was buried in catacombs next to Windsor’s St George’s Chapel.
In 2019, the Queen refused to allow the repatriation of his bones, but in the wake of a new book about his life, campaigners have again called for them to be returned.
One of his descendants, Fasil Minas, told the BBC: “We want his remains back as a family and as Ethiopians because that’s not the country he was born in.” He added that “it wasn’t right” that he was buried in the UK.
But a Buckingham Palace spokesman said: ‘It is very unlikely that it would be possible to exhume the remains without disturbing the resting place of a significant number of others nearby. [in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel].’
The statement added that the palace also had a “responsibility to preserve the dignity of the deceased.”
The young orphan prince cradles a small white doll and stares into space
Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) of Alamayou (1861-1879), the son of King Theodore of Abyssinia, with Captain JC Speedy
Alemayehu’s father, King Tewodros II, known as ‘Mad King Theodore’, had wanted to befriend the British and wrote a letter to Queen Victoria in 1855.
After she failed to answer that and a follow-up letter, Tewodros held the British consul and several missionaries hostage in a high mountain prison.
An army of nearly 40,000 British troops was sent to rescue the 44 hostages. They laid siege to the mountain fortress of Tewodros in Maqdala in northern Ethiopia in April 1868 and emerged victorious.
As the successful mission neared its end, Tewodros took his own life. The wife of Tewodros, the mother of Alemayehu, died while descending the mountain, leaving her son an orphan.
The British also looted thousands of cultural and religious artifacts, including gold crowns and chains, along with the prince and his mother.
According to historian Andrew Heavens, this was done to protect them from the enemies of the Tewodros, who had been close to Maqdala.
After his arrival in June 1868, he met the Queen at her cottage on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England. She later wrote in her diary that he was “a very pretty face, a graceful boy with pretty eyes and a pretty nose and mouth, though the lips are a little thick.”
Alamayu was soon placed under the tutelage of Captain Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy, who had accompanied the prince from Ethiopia.
Although the Queen had wanted him to remain on the Isle of Wight, he first went to India with Speedy before the Treasury ordered that he receive a good education.
He was sent to Cheltenham and Rugby and then Sandhurst but struggled with his studies.
The prince contracted pneumonia when he fell asleep outside one night. After refusing to eat, he died while living in Headingly, in Leeds.
After learning of his death, Victoria wrote, “It’s too sad! All alone in a foreign land, without a single person or relative who belonged to him… His life was not a happy life, full of difficulties of every king.”
At his burial place is a plaque with the inscription: ‘I was a stranger and you took me in.’
A descendant of Prince Alemayehu – an orphan who was financially supported by Queen Victoria and died aged 18 – has demanded that his remains be returned to Ethiopia
Alamayou was an orphan and Captain Speedy became his guardian
The Ethiopian government first demanded the return of Alamayu’s remains in the 1990s. But palace officials have previously insisted they can’t get them back without upsetting those of others.
Campaigner Alula Pankhurst, who sits on Ethiopia’s cultural restitution committee, said The times that the argument is just an “excuse not to deal with it.”
“Bringing this young man home means exposing uncomfortable truths that people don’t want to think about.”
In 2019, Ethiopia’s ambassador to London, Fesseha Shawel Gebre, urged the Queen to think about how she would have felt if one of her relatives had been buried abroad.
“Would she be happy to lie in bed every day, go to sleep, have one of her members of the Royal Family buried somewhere, taken prisoner of war?” he asked. “I don’t think she would.”
He insisted the boy had been “stolen.”
The Ethiopian government has previously said it will reiterate its demand in every meeting its ministers have with their British counterparts.
Prince Alamayu poses for a photo in western attire after being taken to Britain
In 2007, the Ethiopian government wrote to the Queen asking for his body to be returned so that he could be buried next to his father.
“If he hadn’t been taken, if he hadn’t lost his father, he would have been the next king of Ethiopia,” Fesseha said earlier.
The embassy claimed a letter from the Queen’s private secretary said she sympathized, but there were concerns about disturbing the remains of others buried alongside him.
It is clear that more than 40 bodies were buried in the catacombs between 1845 and 1887. It is argued that it would therefore be impossible to identify and exhume his body.