The British Monarchy has turned down a request from Ethiopians seeking the return of the remains of their ancestor, Prince Alemagehu, who was captured as a child in Ethiopia from the British Army, died in England in 1879 and was buried at Windsor Castle.

Prince Alemaguehu died, according to historians, at the age of 18 in Leeds, in the north of England, from pneumonia. Since he was very dear to her, Queen Victoria requested that he be buried in the royal vault at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Ethiopia several times unsuccessfully sought the return of the prince, who was brought to Britain by the British army after his victory over the imperial Ethiopian army in 1868.

Alemageh’s descendants repeated their request to the BBC. “We want to return his remains (…) because this is not the country in which he was born,” said Fazil Minas.

But Buckingham Palace turned down the request. “It is virtually impossible to exhume Alemageh’s remains without disturbing the many other people in the vicinity,” a spokesman for the palace said in a statement to the BBC.

Queen Elizabeth II among members of the royal family buried in St. George’s Chapel.

The statement said the royal house had given permission for Ethiopian delegations to visit the temple in the past.

The memory of the prince remained very strong in Ethiopia. During his visit to London in 1924, Emperor Haile Selassie placed an Amharic inscription on his grave.

Prince Alemagehu was born in 1861. He was taken prisoner along with his mother, Empress Tiruvark, when the British captured the imperial fort of Mekdela on May 13, 1868.

His father, Emperor Theodore II, committed suicide in order not to give up. The Empress died while traveling to Great Britain.

“I was afraid that he would never be happy (…) alone in a foreign country, without parents,” Queen Victoria wrote in her diary. His life “wasn’t happy, it was full of all sorts of hardships, and he was so sensitive that people looked up to him because of his skin color.”

Source: APE-MEB