April 10, 2003

Haile Selassie's daughter and adviser, last of a dynasty said to descend from the Queen of Sheba

The last bond with the polity and long reign of Haile Selassie has been broken, with the death of his daughter Princess Tenagne Worq. Thus comes to an end a dynasty which had existed since the first years of the Christian era. According to the legendary Ethiopian national saga, the Kebra Nagast, the dynasty can even be traced back centuries before Christ, to the union of the Queen of Sheba with King Solomon. More certainly, its historically attested reign was largely unbroken from the early Christian centuries, making it one of the oldest dynasties in the world.

Princess Tenagne Worq was the eldest and only surviving child of Emperor Haile Selassie. At the time of her birth, her father, then styled Dejazmatch Tafari Makonnen, had quite recently been appointed Governor of Harar, the fiefdom of his late father (Ras Makonnen, Emperor Menelik’s cousin and right-hand man). Tafari had married Wayzaro Menen (later his Empress) in 1911, and the arrival in 1912 of a daughter was a joyful occasion for the family as well as the inhabitants of the medieval walled city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia, once a Muslim stronghold and then still an important commercial centre.

Tafari’s father, Ras Makonnen (like Emperor Menelik) was a grandson of King Sahle Selassie (reigned 1813-47), the founder of the Shoan monarchy of central Ethiopia. Tafari’s bride Menen was the granddaughter of King Mika’el (who was of Muslim origin but converted to Christianity by Emperor Yohannes IV). The new princess was thus dynastically well-connected.

She was her parents’ only child to have been born at Harar. By the time her brother, Asfa Wossen (the future Crown Prince), was born in 1916, their father was about to become Regent and Crown Prince under the largely nominal reign of Empress Zawditu.

When Haile Selassie ascended the throne in 1930, Princess Tenagne was already 18. Her relationship with her father had always been close, and for most of her life her father was either the effective ruler or Emperor (1916-74). In character she resembled her father more than any of the Emperor’s other children, for she was strong in adversity, a model to her siblings and her own children, yet compassionate and caring to those in need of succour. Those latter qualities she bequeathed to her own daughters.

At a young age she was married to Ras Desta Bamtaw, to whom she bore four daughters, Aida, Ruth, Seble and Sophie, as well as two sons, Amha (who died in adolescence) and Alexander, who eventually became Commander of the small Ethiopian Navy. Alexander was killed in November 1974, together with 60 other notables, by the brutal dictator Mengistu and his henchmen. Ras Desta himself had been a victim of the Italo-Ethiopian war and was killed in 1936 or 1937. There was another daughter, Mary Ababa, by Ababa Retta, but she perished during the imprisonment under communist rule. Most of Princess Tenagne’s children were educated in England, a country to which they remain warmly attached.

During Emperor Haile Selassie’s exile from 1936 to 1940, he and his family lived at Villa Fairfield at Bath, a house which he gave to the city of Bath during his 1954 state visit to Britain. That house still bears a plaque recording his residence there. Empress Menen found the English climate too rigorous, and eventually had to take up residence in Jerusalem. Thus Princess Tenagne became her father’s hostess and closest companion.

With victory in the Ethiopian campaigns by British, Commonwealth and Ethiopian patriot forces in 1941, members of the Ethiopian Royal Family were reunited in 1941-42 for the first time in several years.

Princess Tenagne was married, secondly, in 1944, to Ras Andargatchew Massai, who had held various senior posts in the Ethiopian Government. From 1952 to 1958 he was the Emperor’s representative or viceroy in the newly federated Eritrea, and he and the prestigious princess presided over an Eritrea which was then tranquil and experimenting with its new status as an autonomous unit within the federal structure of Ethiopia.

With the death of Empress Menen in 1962, Princess Tenagne became ever closer to the Emperor, her ageing father. It was said that she was the only one who might on occasion offer advice or even mild criticism of some political decisions without incurring the wrath of the august sovereign. And as the revolution of 1974 approached, at first gradual but then increasingly sanguinary, she was mostly by her father’s side.

By September the Emperor had been deposed, and the Princess, her daughters, and other close female relatives were imprisoned in grim and inhuman conditions. It was Princess Tenagne who gave courage, strength, and moral resolve to the hapless captives, and she alone was allowed to visit her father in hospital when he underwent an operation in 1975. Her royal admirers in Europe, including the British Royal Family, made many attempts to alleviate the cruel fate of the Princesses. Finally in 1989, after 15 years of harsh imprisonment, they were suddenly released, just two years before Mengistu’s downfall and ignominious flight.

Princess Tenagne and her daughters lived for a year in Addis Ababa before she and two of her daughters were permitted to return to Britain — to be followed by the other royal princesses after Mengistu’s removal. Her only surviving brother, the Crown Prince, who had been saved from a worse fate by hospitalisation in London after a severe stroke, had just left for the United States after 15 years of clement exile in this country.

The Princess was naturally anxious to see her disabled brother after an interval of 18 years. So the two elderly siblings spent the last few years of the Crown Prince’s life in close proximity near Washington.

Princess Tenagne’s health and spirit were much affected by her brother’s death, the last link with an earlier, more traditional, and (since the Second World War at least) more peaceful Ethiopia.

Her own last years were spent in Ethiopia and were made tranquil and comfortable by the devoted care of her daughters and other relatives and friends of Ethiopia. She is survived by her four daughters