Prince Charles's aristocratic young man was asked to protect him from the bullies in Gordonstoun. But he ended up burning a corpse near the Ganges River

He was Charles's trusted wingman, a princely cousin who had been parachuted into the hated Gordonstoun School to protect the newly arrived future king from bullies and prowlers.

He deserved a better fate than to end up as a corpse on a funeral pyre on the banks of the Ganges River.

The tall, lanky Prince Welf of Hanover was Charles' cousin, the son of Prince Philip's sister Sophie, who had married Prince George of Hanover. Welf was born in 1947 in the family's magical Schloss Marienberg – a palace as grand as Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

This was the branch of our royal family that no one ever talked about: “Don't mention the Germans!” was the unspoken diktat of the House of Windsor in the post-war years.

But relations between Prince Philip, his sisters and their families remained close and cordial.

Philip, who believed his son was weak and in need of reinforcement, was nevertheless aware that Charles as a future king might be a target when he finally arrived at Gordonstoun at the age of 13.

So he arranged a secret trip to Marienberg with his son to meet Prince Welf and make plans for their time together at the rugged Morayshire institution.

He continued. He arranged for Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia – a godson of King George VI – and Charles' great-nephew Norton Knatchbull, grandson of Lord Mountbatten, to help stack the deck in Charles' favor by attending the school at the same time.

As a plan it was a failure. Alexander was three years older, and both Welf and Knatchbull were a year ahead of Charles – so the options for close protection were extremely limited.

Charles was famously bullied and was crushingly lonely for most of his time there.

Welf also did not escape. Every time he went to protect his royal cousin at school, he was called 'leech' and 'sponge', and miles away from his home on another continent and with the knowledge among his school contemporaries that his family had many Nazi connections, it was not a happier time for Welf than Charles.

As a wingman he was pretty useless.

When Welf returned to Germany, he was intrigued to hear from his mother, Princess Sophie, about a spiritual journey she had taken to India, and he soon decided to follow her footsteps.

First he found a bride who would accompany him on this – as it turned out – one-way journey.

Wibke van Gunsteren was the daughter of a doctor and the couple had a child, Saskia, before moving to Pune in 1975, en route to the ashram of meditation guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

The ramshackle ashram produced cheap clothing, jewelry, ceramics and cosmetics and organized theater, music and mime performances. It also had an elastic attitude towards sexual relations, which infuriated the strict Indian authorities.

Because of an emotionally charged, bedlam atmosphere, some so-called therapy groups were decidedly risky, as they allowed for a degree of physical aggression and spontaneous sexual encounters between participants.

Reports of injuries sustained during meet-up group sessions began to leak from the gated community.

It was claimed that the increasing violence in the therapy groups finally ended in January 1979, when the ashram issued a press release stating that violence had “fulfilled its function within the overall context of the ashram as an evolving spiritual commune.”

Yet the manner of Welf's mysterious death in 1981 might suggest otherwise.

When he and Wibke arrived at the commune, he was given the name Vimalkirti, or Spotless Glory, while she was called Turiyä (Spiritual Love).

Although their arrival generated as many celebrity headlines as the Beatles' visit to Marahirishi's ashram in Rishikesh seven years earlier, compared to their luxurious treatment, Welf was given the modest task of being a member of the ceremonial bodyguard. who followed the Bhagwan.

Alarmed royal relations visited Pune to check on the prince's well-being and reported on his 'weakened condition', which they attributed to the ashram's weak diet.

One day, after five years of stay, and during what was described as “morning exercises,” but perhaps something more violent, it was never diagnosed: the prince suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed.

Unconscious, he was dragged to a nearby clinic and given artificial respiration, but fell back into a coma.

Although doctors agreed that the prince's condition was hopeless, the Bhagwan insisted that his royal disciple should be kept on a ventilator for as long as possible.

Three days later the prince's kidneys failed and he died early the next morning.

His death had a deep impact on his parents, who felt their son and daughter-in-law had been brainwashed into embracing an insane way of life.

A long legal battle ensued, in which Princess Sophie challenged her daughter-in-law over custody of her granddaughter, Princess Saskia, who was only ten years old at the time. She lost.

Before Prince Welf's body was consumed at the stake in January 1981, the Bhagwan spoke to a crowd of two thousand followers who had witnessed his cremation: “When I told him that he could now go to the hereafter, he shouted with joy: “Far away!”'

Charles' wingman had finally found his nirvana, but at a price. He was only 33 when he died.