Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen (Amha Selassie)

Asfaw Wossen Tafari was born on the twenty-seventh of July 1916 at Harar in the eastern Ethiopian highlands, the eldest son and second child of Ras Tafari Makonnen — the future Emperor Haile Selassie I — and Woizero Menen Asfaw (placed in this archive), the future Empress Menen. He was raised at the Harari court of his father and at the imperial palace at Addis Ababa.

He received the classical Ge'ez and Amharic literary education of the Solomonic imperial princes at the imperial palace school at Addis Ababa — and was instructed in French, English and Italian under the European tutors brought by his father for the children of the imperial house.

He was named Crown Prince of Ethiopia at the imperial coronation of his father on the third of November 1930 at the Cathedral of Saint George at Addis Ababa — and held the title of Crown Prince from that date until the deposition of his father on the twelfth of September 1974.

He followed his father into exile at Bath, England in May 1936 at the Italian invasion of Ethiopia — and was educated at the Liverpool Cathedral School and at the École de Médecine of Lausanne in Switzerland across the period of the exile.

He returned with the imperial party at the restoration of the Ethiopian Empire in May 1941 — and was appointed Governor of the Province of Wollo at Dessie from 1947 to 1955.

He was acclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia by the imperial cabinet on the twelfth of September 1974 at the deposition of his father by the Derg military council — though he was at the time in Geneva under medical treatment and was prevented by the Derg from returning to Ethiopia.

He was acclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia in exile on the eighth of April 1989 at the conclusion of the Ethiopian Crown Council in London — at the twenty-five-year confirmation of his imperial title.

He held the imperial title in exile from 1989 to 1997 at the imperial residences at London and McLean, Virginia.

He died at McLean, Virginia on the seventeenth of January 1997 of complications of a stroke, at eighty.

He is honored here as the last titular Emperor of Ethiopia.