There was once a prince and he wanted a princess but then she must be a real Princess
He travelled right around the world to find one
But there was always something wrong
There were plenty of princesses
But whether they were real princesses he had great difficulty in discovering
There was always something which was not quite right about them
So at last he had come home again and he was very sad because he wanted a real princess so badly
One evening there was a terrible storm
It thundered and lightninged and the rain poured down in torrents
Indeed it was a fearful night
In the middle of the storm somebody knocked at the town gate
and the old King himself sent to open it
It was a princess who stood outside
But she was in a terrible state from the rain and the storm
The water streamed out of her hair and her clothes;
it ran in at the top of her shoes and out at the heel
But she said that she was a real princess
‘Well we shall soon see if that is true,’ thought the old Queen, but she said nothing
She went into the bedroom, took all the bed clothes off and laid a pea on the bedstead
Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses
This was where the princess was to sleep that night
In the morning they asked her how she slept
‘Oh terribly bad!’ said the princess
‘I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night! Heaven knows what was in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing, and my whole body is black and blue this morning. It is terrible!’
They saw at once that she must be a real princess when she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds.
Nobody but a real princess could have such a delicate skin
So the prince took her to be his wife, for now he was sure that he had found a real princess
And the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it. There, that is a true story
The Princess and the Pea appeared in Hans Christian Andersen’s first collection of tales for children in 1835
The moral lesson:
Do not judge a person by the way they look on the outside
Moral Lesson continued:
Even the smallest things can make a big difference. We dont think that something so small can make an impact. The Princess and the Pea tells us that something so small is what made all the difference.
And along came Baby Pea
