# The Princess and the Pea

_Hans Christian Andersen_ · 3 min read · ages 4-8

A prince searches the whole world for a real princess but can never be quite sure any of them are genuine, until a storm-soaked stranger arrives at the palace gate one night claiming to be one herself. A single pea hidden beneath twenty mattresses becomes the delicate test that finally proves her true royal blood.

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Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess, but she had to be a real princess, through and through. So he traveled the whole world over to find one, and everywhere he went, something was missing. There were princesses enough, but not one of them seemed quite right, and he could never be sure they were real. So at last he came home again, feeling rather sad, for he did want a real princess so very much.

One evening a terrible storm blew in. Thunder cracked, lightning flashed, and the rain came down in sheets. In the middle of it all, someone knocked at the city gate, and the old king went to see who it was.

There on the doorstep stood a princess. But goodness, what a state the storm had left her in! Water streamed from her hair and her clothes, ran in at the top of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she insisted she was a real princess.

“Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the old queen, though she didn’t say a word. She went straight to the guest room, stripped the bed down to its bare frame, and placed a single pea on the boards. Then she piled on twenty mattresses, and on top of those, twenty featherbeds.

That was the bed the princess had to sleep in that night. In the morning, they asked her how she had slept.

“Oh, terribly,” she said. “I barely closed my eyes the whole night through. Heaven knows what was in that bed, but I was lying on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was dreadful!”

Now they knew she was a real princess, for she had felt a single pea straight through twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds. No one but a real princess could have skin so delicate.

So the prince married her, certain at last that he had found his real princess. And the pea was placed in the museum, where it can still be seen today, unless someone has gone and taken it. And that, now, is a true story.

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- Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/the-princess-and-the-pea
- Source: Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Mrs. H. B. Paull (1872) (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fairy_tales_of_Andersen_(Paull)/The_Princess_and_the_Pea)
- Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Mrs. H. B. Paull (1872) — original: Hans Christian Andersen died 1875 (+70); translation: H. B. Paull died 1888 (+70)
- License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)