Buckingham Palace Refuses to Return Remains of Ethiopian Prince Buried in Windsor Castle Grounds

May 2024 · 4 minute read

Buckingham Palace refuses to return remains of Ethiopian prince who is buried in Windsor Castle grounds

An Ethiopian prince, buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th century, will not have his remains returned by Buckingham Palace.

Mail Online reported that a descendant of Prince Alemayehu, who was deeply loved and financially supported by Queen Victoria and died at 18, has requested the return of his remains to Ethiopia.

However, Buckingham Palace has declined the request, citing potential disruption to other burials in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.

The Palace, while acknowledging the desire to honor Prince Alemayehu’s memory, emphasized their obligation to maintain the dignity of the deceased.

Prince Alemayehu was brought to England after his father, Emperor Tewodros II, committed suicide during a British assault on his mountain-top palace in northern Ethiopia in 1868.

The orphaned seven-year-old was cherished by Queen Victoria, received education at Sandhurst military academy, but tragically died from pneumonia at the age of 18 in 1879 and was interred in the catacombs near Windsor’s St George’s Chapel.

In 2019, the Queen rebuffed a request for repatriation of his bones. However, with a new book about his life, activists have renewed their call for the return of his remains.

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

However, a spokesperson from Buckingham Palace stated: “It is very unlikely it would be possible to exhume the remains without disturbing the resting place of a substantial number of others in the vicinity [in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel].”

The statement also emphasized the palace’s “responsibility to preserve the dignity of the departed.”

Alamayu’s father, King Tewodros II, known as ‘Mad King Theodore’, had sought friendship with the British and wrote to Queen Victoria in 1855.

After receiving no response to his letters, Tewodros took the British consul and several missionaries as hostages in a high mountain jail.

An army of almost 40,000 British troops were dispatched to rescue the 44 hostages. They laid siege to Tewodros’ mountain fortress at Maqdala in northern Ethiopia in April 1868 and emerged triumphant.

As the successful mission neared its end, Tewodros took his own life. Alamayu’s mother, Tewodros’s wife, died on her way down the mountain, leaving her son an orphan.

The British also confiscated numerous cultural and religious artifacts, including gold crowns and necklaces, along with the prince.

According to historian Andrew Heavens, this was done to protect them from Tewodros’ adversaries, who were close to Maqdala.

After his arrival in June 1868, he met the Queen at her holiday home on the Isle of Wight, off the coast of England. She later described him in her diary as “a very pretty sight, a graceful boy with beautiful eyes and a nice nose and mouth, though the lips are slightly thick.”

Alamayu was placed under the guardianship 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 initially went with Speedy to India before the Treasury directed that he receive a proper education.

He was sent to Cheltenham and Rugby before attending Sandhurst, but he struggled with his studies.

The prince contracted pneumonia when he fell asleep outside one night. After refusing to eat, he passed away while living in Headingly, in Leeds.

Upon learning of his death, Victoria wrote: “It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him… His was no happy life, full of difficulties of every kind.”

Near his burial site, there is a plaque bearing the inscription: “I was a stranger and you took me in.”

The Ethiopian government initially requested the return of Alamayu’s remains in the 1990s. However, Palace officials had previously stated they cannot retrieve them without disturbing others.

Campaigner Alula Pankhurst, a member of Ethiopia’s cultural restitution committee, told The Times that the argument was simply an “excuse for not dealing with it.”

‘Bringing this young man home means unearthing uncomfortable truths that people don’t want to think about,’ he added.

In 2019, Ethiopia’s ambassador to London, Fesseha Shawel Gebre, urged the Queen to consider how she would have felt if one of her relatives were buried in a foreign land.

‘Would she happily lie in bed every day, go to sleep, having one of her Royal Family members buried somewhere, taken as prisoner of war?’ he questioned. ‘I think she wouldn’t.’

He insisted that the boy was ‘stolen’.


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