The Princess and the Pea

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess, but she would have to be a real one. He travelled all over the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were plenty of princesses, but whether they were real ones he could never quite determine.

One evening a terrible storm blew up. A knock came at the city gate, and outside stood a princess, bedraggled and dripping wet. The old queen put a pea at the bottom of the bed and stacked twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds on top. The next morning the princess said she had slept terribly, bruised all over. Only a real princess could be so sensitive, and so the prince married her.