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LONDON - Buckingham Palace has refused to return the body of an Ethiopian prince who was buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th century.

A descendant of Prince Alemayehu - an orphan who was adored and supported financially by Queen Victoria and died at the age of 18 - has demanded that his remains be returned to Ethiopia.

However, Buckingham Palace has maintained that removing the body would affect others buried in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.

The palace said that chapel authorities empathised with the need to honour Prince Alemayehu’s memory, but added they also had ‘the responsibility to preserve the dignity of the departed’. It confirmed that in the past, the Royal Household ‘accommodated requests from Ethiopian delegations to visit’ the chapel.

Prince Alemayehu was brought to England after his father, Emperor Tewodros II killed himself as British forces stormed his mountain-top palace in northern Ethiopia in 1868.

Adored

The orphaned seven-year-old was adored by Queen Victoria and educated at Sandhurst military academy. But he tragically died at the age of 18 from pneumonia 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 wake of a new book about his life campaigners have renewed calls to return them.

One of his descendants Fasil Minas told the BBC: “We want his remains back as a family and as Ethiopians because that is not the country he was born in”, and added ‘it was not right’ for him to be buried in the UK.

The statement added that the palace also had a ‘responsibility to preserve the dignity of the departed’.

Alamayu’s father, King Tewodros II, known as ‘Mad King Theodore’, had wanted to be friends with the British and wrote a letter to Queen Victoria in 1855.

After she failed to reply to that and a follow-up letter, Tewodros took the British consul and several missionaries hostage in a high mountain jail.

In retaliation, the Emperor held several Europeans, including members of the British consul, hostage.

An army of nearly 40 000 British troops were sent to rescue the 44 hostages. They lay siege in April 1868 to Tewodros’ mountain fortress at Maqdala in northern Ethiopia and emerged victorious.

As the successful mission neared its conclusion, Tewodros took his own life.

Tewodros’s wife, Alamayu’s mother, died on her way down the mountain, leaving her son an orphan.

Plundered

The British also plundered thousands of cultural and religious artefacts including gold crowns and necklaces, alongside the prince and his mother.

According to historian Andrew Heavens, this was done in order to keep them safe from the Tewodros’ enemies, who had been close to Maqdala.

Following his arrival in June 1868, he met the Queen at her holiday home on the Isle of Wight, off England’s South Coast. She later wrote in her diary that he was ‘a very pretty sight, a graceful boy with beautiful eyes and a nice nose and mouth, though the lips are slightly thick’.