Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to find a princess, but she would have to be a real princess. So he traveled all around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were princesses enough, but he could never be sure that they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not quite right. So he came home again and was sad, for he so much wanted to have a real princess. That seems like his own fault that he was so picky. One evening there was a terrible storm. It thundered and lightninged! The rain poured down! It was horrible! Then there was a knock at the city gate, and the old king went out to open it. I have always hated the rain and the storm on this day was the worst I had been in yet. A princess was standing outside. But my goodness, how she looked from the rain and the weather! Water ran down from her hair and her clothes. It ran into the toes of her shoes and out at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess. "Well, we shall soon find that out," thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bedroom, took off all the bedding and laid a pea on the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty featherbeds of eiderdown on top of the mattresses. It seems like his mother has played a role in the prince thinking that he must “discover” whether a princess is real or not. I might not have looked my best that day, but what would I have even gained by lying about being a princess anyways? That was where the princess was to sleep for the night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept. "Oh, horribly!" she said. "I hardly closed my eyes all night. Goodness knows what there was in the bed! I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It is horrible!" I am a delicate sleeper, especially the first night in a new bed. It wasn’t even that I felt that tiny pea she put there. It was just that their mattresses were so lumpy and hard that I counted sheep all night to no avail. Now they could see that she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty featherbeds. Nobody but a real princess could be that sensitive. My status as a “real” princess is such an odd thing to associate with my terrible insomnia So the prince took her for his wife, because now he knew that he had a real princess. And the pea was put in the art gallery where it can still be seen, unless someone has taken it. At this rate they should have framed that mattress, since it was the real reason I couldn’t sleep whatsoever.