Buckingham Palace has refused to release the remains of an Ethiopian prince who was buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th century

• Descendants of Ethiopia's Prince Alemayehu are calling for his remains to be returned.
• The prince was buried in the UK in the 19th century after he was taken there as a child.

Officials at Buckingham Palace have declined a request to release the remains of an Ethiopian prince who was buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th century, BBC News initially reported.

Prince Alemayehu was born in 1861 to Tewodros II, Emperor of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), and arrived in the UK as an orphan at the age of seven after he was taken by British soldiers following the battle of Maqdala.

As Insider previously reported, Alemayehu's father died by suicide in order to evade imprisonment after the battle, and his mother died during the journey to Britain.

Queen Victoria took an interest in the young prince and arranged his education. Alemayehu lived in Britain for the remainder of his young life, as he died from pleurisy at the age of 18. He was buried at St George's Chapel in the grounds of Windsor Castle, a 900-year-old royal residence in England that's also the largest occupied castle in the world.

Alemayehu's descendants are calling for his remains to be returned to his home country. One of the descendants, Fasil Minas, told BBC News that Alemayehu shouldn't have been buried in the UK because it's not the country he was born in.

In a statement shared with Insider, a palace spokesperson said: "The Dean and Canons of Windsor are very sensitive to the need to honour the memory of Prince Alemayehu," referencing the ecclesiastical body of St George's Chapel.

"However, they have been advised that 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 spokesperson said.

"Conscious of the responsibility to preserve the dignity of the departed it is therefore, with regret, not possible to agree to the request, but in recent years we have accommodated requests from Ethiopian delegations to visit St Georges and will continue to do so," they added.

This isn't the first time the palace has rejected a request to return the prince's remains. As The Guardian reported in 2018, the late Queen Elizabeth II refused the Ethiopian president's request in 2006. According to the Ethiopian embassy, the Lord Chamberlain replied in a letter on behalf of the Queen, writing that while the monarch was "in favour of repatriation," identifying the remains of the prince wouldn't be possible, The Guardian reported.

Fasil Minas could not be reached for comment.