Ethiopia has called on Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to return the bones of an orphan prince buried at Windsor Castle after he was spirited from his homeland by British soldiers nearly 140 years ago.

Prince Alemayehu was just seven in 1868 when his father, Emperor Tewodros II, committed suicide after being defeated by British troops at the Battle of Magdala. The prince was placed on a ship to Britain and enrolled in boarding school. He died aged 18 of suspected pleurisy, a lung condition, in the northern city of Leeds, after years of loneliness.

In the latest Ethiopian drive to reclaim stolen artefacts and relics, the government in Addis Ababa has written to Britain’s queen, asking her to send home Alemayehu’s remains. Mulugeta Aserate, second cousin of Ethiopia’s last emperor Haile Selassie, who helped organise the appeal, said it was time the wrongs of the last millennium were put right.

“The prince was a prisoner of war,” he told Reuters. “His return would ease the minds of lots of Ethiopians who believe his rightful resting place should be here with his father.” A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman declined to discuss the request. “We never comment on private correspondence to the queen and any response that may have been given,” she said.

The prince – who claimed a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba – was seized by a British force that invaded to free European diplomats, missionaries and adventurers jailed by Emperor Tewodros. The emperor took his own life as the troops stormed his mountain fortress in Magdala. Alemayehu’s ailing mother, Queen Terunish, died a few days later as the soldiers moved to the Red Sea coast with the rest of the royal family.