Ian Lloyd tells the story of how Prince Alamayu was brought to Britain

It’s been over 140 years since the orphaned Prince Alamayou was buried in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Dear to Queen Victoria’s heart, the Prince is almost literally part of the fabric of the ancient vaults today.

But the story of the Ethiopian boy who has come to be known as the “Stolen Prince” has led to a very modern dilemma.

Should the royal family agree to his repeated request from the descendant to return his body?

Last week, the Windsors said ‘no’ – again – arguing that removing the remains would affect others buried in the vaults, including Henry VIII and George V. It’s a distressing concern for everyone involved.

But the full story of Prince Alamayou and Queen Victoria’s interest in the boy is more emotional and strange, still – a tale of infatuation or even obsession, as historian Ian Lloyd explains here in a chapter of his biography of Queen Victoria…

Thursday 16th July 1868 and Queen Victoria is in residence at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

Unable to handle the sweltering heat, the Queen spends most of the day indoors before drinking tea in the garden with her daughters Alice and Helena.

The three continue to paint outside in the Italian garden until 8 am when word reaches them that the young son of the Emperor of Abyssinia, whom they had been expecting since yesterday, had arrived.

As she emerges on Osborne’s Lower Terrace, the Queen comes face to face with a bearded giant of a man and a frail, sad-looking child in Abyssinian robes.

‘Little Alamayou is a very pretty, somewhat graceful boy of 7,’ Victoria remarked, ‘with beautiful eyes and a beautiful nose and mouth, although the lips are a little thick. His skin is dark bronze in color. His hair, which is shaved, is fresh and curly.’

This was, of course, a royal child, and Victoria treated him as she would one of her own children.

I kissed him, which he returned. He can say one or two words in English. Captain: Speedy, who brought him, says the poor boy will not leave him for a moment, and always sleeps near him. They are an extraordinary contrast, Capt: Speedy is 6 ft: 6! & have red hair.’

Alamayou (“I have seen the world”) was the son of Emperor Tewodros (or Theodorus) of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). After the latter’s suicide in 1868, the explorer and adventurer Tristram Speedy, who was in the country to assist the British Expeditionary Force led by Sir Robert Napier, was given the task of escorting the Prince to England.

Shortly after his departure, Alamayou’s mother, Empress Tirunesh, succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 25, leaving Alamayou an orphan.

Historians differ on the removal of the prince from his homeland. Some suggest that the Empress lobbied Napier to keep Speedy away from her child and herself. The surviving accounts are almost all British and paint a different picture, one that the Queen readily believed.

Alamayou’s plight was romanticized by Victorian England. A newspaper called him ‘England’s Royal Foundling’ and by the time he arrived in Plymouth in July 1868 he was a celebrity. Crowds gathered at each appearance and press coverage of his arrival was eagerly picked up.

Victor was no exception. The Prince moved in with Speedy and his wife Cornelia at their home, Afton Manor, Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, just 15 miles from Osborne, and the Queen immediately made a request to meet the new arrival.

After his first visit on the evening of July 16, Alamayou and Speedy stayed at the royal estate at Osborne Cottage. The next day the prince was taken to Victoria: “He was so kind and gentle,” she wrote in her diary. “He took a peach, which I gave him, and seemed to enjoy it very much.”

The guardian then gave the Queen an account of what Alamayou had experienced: “Capt: Speedy said that the poor child had a memory of the terrible slaughter of the captives by his father’s hand and orders, after hearing the cries.”

He also gave the Queen his version of how he came to care for the Prince, a story that clearly touched Victoria’s heart. “There seems to have been madness in the family. As the poor mother lay dying, she asked Capt: Speedy if he had any ill will towards her and Theodore.

He replied no, and that he was very sorry that Theodore had not made peace, to which she said, “Then will you be a father to my boy?” what he promised he would do. Nothing is kinder than he has been to the child, like a mother. I have written strongly against removing Alamayou from Capt: Speedy’s care’.

After the two-day visit, a lovelorn Victoria sent a detailed account of Alamayou and his nanny to her eldest daughter Vicky, [Victoria, 1840 – 1901, Princess Royal of Britain, wife of ‘Fritz’, the future Emperor Frederick III of Germany. 

‘The poor little boy a dear, gentle, pretty, intelligent little darling of seven years old, clings to him like an infant to its mother or nurse – can’t bear him out of his sight, sleeps near him, and sometimes even in his bed – as he is very nervous and seems to have dreadful recollections of the murder of those people whom his father killed.’

To a modern mind the idea of Speedy sharing a bed with a vulnerable child is deeply disturbing, but the Queen saw

only the purest of motives: ‘Captain Speedy is really like the tenderest mother to him and it is quite touching to see this great man of 6 foot 6 inches (!!) leading about this little child! The poor mother asked him to be a father to her child when she was dying.’

During the first visit the Queen commissioned Jabez Hughes, a local photographer based at Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, to photograph the Captain and the prince, both wearing Abyssinian dress and with a round shield in front of them.

The same month she invited the artist Reginald Easton to produce a watercolour miniature on ivory of Alamayou in his native dress. The sensitive portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition in 1869 and is still in the royal collection.

In May 1869, Victoria noted in her journal: ‘Saw Capt: Speedy with little Alamayou, who is so much grown & improved, looking so nice & intelligent. Capt: Speedy is going to India, where he has got an appointment, and is going to take the dear little boy with him. ‘

Starting life anew in the sub-continent, the childless Speedys felt Alamayou had ‘entwined himself around our hearts’ and was ‘the best boy in the universe.’ 

What they hadn’t banked on, was the attitude of the Gladstone’s new Liberal government and in particular that of Robert Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Lowe felt the little prince’s future was matter for them and in a letter to the PM argued: ‘We are in loco parentis and ought to look after his welfare as if he were our own child.’ He ordered Captain Speedy to send Alamayou back to England to start his formal education there. 

The Captain himself returned and pleaded in person to Gladstone and the Queen. A furious Victoria offered to pay for a private tutor so the boy could remain In India but found herself overruled by her ministers, and Alamayou was sent to a succession of private schools including Cheltenham and Rugby. 

Although he enjoyed sport, he had little interest in studying and became depressed and isolated.

A series of photographs in the royal collection show Alamayou during his childhood and early teens. He is dressed to look a quintessentially British aristocrat in Lord Fauntleroy velvet knickerbockers and later in a woollen suit, clutching a bowler hat and gloves, and his sad expression in them seems to testify to his confused emotions.

His Abyssinian grandmother wrote, begging for him to return, in letters he is thought not to have seen in case they distressed him. She also wrote, grandmother to grandmother, to Victoria: ‘I humbly kiss your Majesty’s hand. Three of my children have lost to death. Now only Dejazmach Alemayehu is left. I implore you look well after him. ‘

The Queen continued to monitor the prince’s education and general development. Each summer she invited him to stay with her at Balmoral where he went out daily with the keepers and said the Highlands reminded him of his home. The court circular tells us he went to the local Braemar Gathering which the modern-day royal family still attends.

In 1878 he was taken out of Rugby to begin an officer’s training course at Sandhurst, but once again he was unhappy and asked if he could resume his studies with his old Rugby tutor Cyril Ransome, father of the Swallows and Amazon writer Arthur Ransome.

By this time Ransome was a history professor at the Yorkshire College, now Leeds University, and Alamayou went to live with him at his home in Far Headingley, three miles north of the city.

The 18-year-old prince had barely resumed his studies when, according to Ransome he committed ‘a foolish act (he went to sleep in the WC in the middle of a cold night.)’ He contracted pneumonia which developed into pleurisy and despite the ministrations of several doctors, and after a six-week struggle, the prince died on 14 November 1879.

The Queen, on the Balmoral estate, recorded Alamayou’s decline in a series of entries in her journal from the end of October. She instructed Sir John Cowell, Master of the Household to visit Alamayou and noted the courtier ‘found him very ill, but quite pleased to see him.’

Victoria’s sadness at the young man’s death is clear from her entry for the 14th: ‘Very grieved & shocked to hear by telegram, that good Alamayou passed away this morning. It is too sad! All alone, in a strange country, without a single person or relative, belonging to him, so young, & so good, but for him one cannot repine. His, was no happy life, full of difficulties of every kind, & he was so sensitive, thinking people stared at him on account of his colour, that I fear he would never have been happy. Everyone is sorry.’

The Queen arranged for Alamayou to be buried at Windsor, and Ransome accompanied his body from Leeds to Berkshire. 

The service was held at St George’s Chapel, Windsor with Ransome, Cowell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lowe and the Queen’s son in law Prince Christian present. 

A floral tribute from Victoria with the message: ‘This wreath is a mark of affection and friendship from the Queen,’ was placed on the oak coffin. 

 Afterwards the remains were interred in a specially built brick vault outside the west entrance in the Horseshoe Cloister.

On her return to Windsor the Queen visited the Chapel and selected a spot for a brass plaque to be commemorate the prince with the words: “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” At the same time, she commissioned the sculptor Francis Williamson to create a brass bust of Alamayou based on a cast made after death. It is now in the Durbar Corridor at Osborne House.

In 2007 the Ethiopian Government requested the return of Alamayou’s remains to be interred in the land of his birth. At the time it was confirmed that Elizabeth II’s representatives at Windsor were considering the request. 

To date, the young prince of Abyssinia’s body still lies on the royal estate, a quarter of a mile from where Victoria, his benefactress, was also interred. 

•  An Audience with Queen Victoria: The Royal Opinion in 30 Famous Victorians by Ian Lloyd, The History Press, RRP £16.99