Buckingham Palace refuses to return remains of Ethiopia's 'stolen’ prince

By Mehmet Solmaz

BIRMINGHAM, England (AA) - Buckingham Palace has refused to return the body of a teenage Ethiopian prince who was buried at Windsor Castle 144 years ago.

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 rejected the call once again, saying that removing the body would affect others buried in the catacombs of St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.

"It is very unlikely that it would be possible to exhume the remains without disturbing the resting place of a substantial number of others in the vicinity," the palace said.

In 2019, Ethiopian Ambassador to London Fesseha Shawel Gebre urged Queen Elizabeth II to consider how she would have felt if one of her relatives was 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? I think she wouldn’t,” Fesseha said.

She insisted that the boy was “stolen.”

The Ethiopian government has previously said that it will repeat its demand at every meeting its ministers have with their British counterparts.

Prince Alemayehu was the only legitimate son of Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II. He was brought to the UK at 7 after his father died by suicide in 1868, following his defeat by British troops at the battle of Magdala in Ethiopia.

Alemayehu died of a lung condition at just 18, in 1879, and the queen arranged his burial at St. George's Chapel in Windsor.