2023-05-23 12:35:40
United Kingdom
The monarchy does not return to Ethiopia the remains of a prince who died in 1879
Queen Victoria wanted Prince Alemayehu, captured in 1868, to be buried in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. London explains its refusal by its desire to preserve the dignity of the deceased.
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Prince Alemayehu was buried in the crypt of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, where Elizabeth II, who died last September, and many members of the British royal family are buried.
The British monarchy rejected on Tuesday the request of Ethiopians wanting to recover the remains of their ancestor, a prince who died in England in 1879, after being captured as a child in Ethiopia by the British army and buried at Windsor Castle.
Prince Alemayehu died aged 18 in Leeds of pneumonia, according to historians. Queen Victoria, who appreciated him, wanted him to be buried in the royal crypt of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, west London.
Ethiopia has repeatedly demanded, in vain, the return of the prince, taken by force to the United Kingdom by the British, after their victory over the army of the Ethiopian empire, in 1868. Descendants of Alemayehu have reiterated this request to the BBC. “We want his body back, because it’s not the country where he was born,” said one of them, Fasil Minas.
“I feel sorry for him, as if I knew him,” added another descendant, Abebech Kasa. “He was dislodged from Ethiopia, from Africa, from the land of the blacks, and remained ‘in England’ as if he had no home.”
Elizabeth II y repose
But Buckingham Palace rejected this request, saying it was “very sensitive to the need to honor the memory of Prince Alemayehu”. “It is highly unlikely that it will be possible to exhume Alemayehu’s remains without disturbing the resting place of a large number of other people nearby,” a palace spokesman said. “In view of the responsibility to preserve the dignity of the deceased, it is therefore, with regret, not possible to respond positively to the request.”
“It is highly unlikely that it will be possible to exhume Alemayehu’s remains without disturbing the resting place of large numbers of other people nearby.”
Buckingham Palace
Queen Elizabeth II, who died last September, is among many members of the royal family buried in St. George’s Chapel. But the royal household has in the past “acceded to requests for visits by Ethiopian delegations” to the chapel and “will continue to do so”.
The memory of the prince remained vivid in Ethiopia. During a trip to London in 1924, Emperor Haile Selassie had placed on his tomb a plaque engraved in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. In 2007, Ethiopian President Girma Wolde-Giorgis asked Queen Elizabeth II for the prince to be returned to his country.
Victoria feared he would ‘never be happy’
Prince Alemayehu, born in 1861, was captured with his mother, Empress Tiruwork, when the British conquered the imperial fortress of Mekdela on May 13, 1868. His father, Emperor Tewodros, had committed suicide rather than to go. The Empress died during the trip.
Queen Victoria had taken a liking to him. “I feared he would never be happy, alone in a foreign land, without parents,” she wrote in her diary. His life “has not been happy, full of difficulties of all kinds, and he was so sensitive, believing that people were looking at him because of his color”, acknowledged the queen.
(AFP)
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