How Prince Charles’s aristocratic wingman ended up on a funeral pyre

He was Charles’s trusted wingman, a princely cousin parachuted into the hated Gordonstoun college to guard the newly-arrived future king from bullies and sneaks.

He deserved a greater destiny than to finish up a corpse on a funeral pyre on the banks of the River Ganges.

Tall, gangling Prince Welf of Hanover was Charles’s first-cousin – the son of Prince Philip‘s sister Sophie, who’d married Prince George of Hanover. Welf was born on the household’s magical Schloss Marienberg – a palace each bit as grand as Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle – in 1947.

These have been the department of our royal household that no person ever spoke about – ‘Don’t point out the Germans!’ was the House of Windsor’s unstated diktat within the post-war years.

But relations between Prince Philip, his sisters and their households, remained shut and heat. 

Philip, who thought his son was feeble and wanted manning up, was nonetheless conscious that as future king, Charles may very well be a goal when he lastly arrived at Gordonstoun aged 13. 

So he organized a secret journey to Marienberg together with his son to fulfill Prince Welf to plan for his or her time collectively within the rugged Morayshire establishment.

He went additional. He organized for Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia – a godson of King George VI – and Charles’s second cousin Norton Knatchbull, who was Lord Mountbatten’s grandson, to assist stack the deck in Charles’s favour by becoming a member of the varsity on the identical time.

As a plan, it was a failure. Alexander was three years older, and each Welf and Knatchbull have been a yr forward of Charles – so the alternatives for shut safety have been extraordinarily restricted. 

Charles was famously picked on, and was crushingly lonely for many of his time there.

Welf didn’t escape both. Whenever he went to guard his royal cousin in school he was referred to as ‘bloodsucker’ and ‘sponge’ and, miles from his house on one other continent and with the information amongst his college contemporaries that his household had many Nazi connections, it was no happier a time for Welf than Charles. 

As a wingman, he was fairly ineffective.

Returning to Germany, Welf was intrigued to be taught from his mom Princess Sophie of a non secular journey she’d taken to India, and shortly determined to comply with her footsteps.

First, he discovered himself a bride to accompany him on this – because it turned out – one-way journey.

Wibke van Gunsteren was a physician’s daughter and the couple had a baby, Saskia, earlier than setting off for Poona in 1975, heading for the ashram run by the meditation guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

The rickety ashram produced low-grade garments, jewelry, ceramics, and cosmetics and hosted performances of theatre, music, and mime. It additionally had an elastic angle in direction of sexual relations which infuriated the straitlaced Indian authorities.

With an emotionally charged, madhouse ambiance, a few of the so-called remedy teams have been decidedly dangerous, permitting a level of bodily aggression in addition to spontaneous sexual encounters between individuals. 

Reports of accidents sustained in encounter group classes started to leak out of the closed group.

Increasing violence within the remedy teams, it was claimed, finally led to January 1979, when the ashram issued a press launch stating that violence ‘had fulfilled its perform throughout the total context of the ashram as an evolving non secular commune’. 

Yet the style of Welf’s mysterious loss of life in 1981 may recommend in any other case.

When he and Wibke arrived within the commune he was given the title Vimalkirti, or Spotless Glory, whereas she was dubbed Turiyä (Spiritual Love). 

Though their arrival induced as a lot movie star headlines because the Beatles’ go to to the Marahirishi’s ashram in Rishikesh seven years earlier, by comparability to their luxurious therapy Welf, cousin of a future king, was given the standard job of being a member of the ceremonial bodyguard which adopted the Bhagwan about.

Alarmed royal relations visited Poona to check out the prince’s welfare and reported again on his “weakened condition,” which they attributed to the ashram’s feeble weight-reduction plan.

One day, after 5 years’ residence, and through what was described as ‘morning workouts’ however might have been one thing extra violent, it was by no means established – the prince suffered a stroke that paralysed him. 

Unconscious, he was dragged to a close-by clinic and given synthetic respiration, however relapsed right into a coma.

Though docs agreed the prince’s situation was hopeless, the Bhagwan insisted that his royal follower needs to be stored on life-support so long as doable. 

Three days later, the prince’s kidneys failed and he died early subsequent morning.

His loss of life deeply affected his mother and father, who felt that their son and daughter-in-law had been brainwashed into embracing an insane lifestyle.

A protracted authorized battle ensued, throughout which Princess Sophie challenged her daughter-in-law over the custody of her granddaughter, Princess Saskia, then simply ten years outdated. She misplaced.

Before Prince Welf’s physique was consumed on the funeral pyre in January 1981, the Bhagwan spoke out to a crowd of two thousand followers who’d come to witness his cremation: ‘When I advised him that he might now go to the afterlife, he shouted with pleasure: “Far out!”‘

Charles’s wingman had lastly discovered his nirvana, however at a worth. He was simply 33 when he died.