The Princess and the Pea

Once upon a time, a prince named Clark wanted a beautiful princess so delicate that she would cry if she slept on a pile of mattresses with a pea underneath the one on the bottom. The call went far and wide for such a princess. Sadly, every single princess fell fast asleep.

Now an impossibly beautiful and talented girl named Lana came forth and claimed to be the one who could do so. She spent the entire night complaining, thrashing and moaning that it was so painful that they knew that she must be of royal lineage despite her evasive answers about her precise parentage.

So the prince and Lana got married.

Now the story should have ended there but alas, the prince realized that a bride who could not tolerate a pea under a pile of mattresses was much too fragile for wifely duties so he dare not embrace her with much passion lest she be injured. This rather surprised and frustrated the bride. Despite her entreaties, he refused to go much further than reverent kisses and professions of a deep and undying love.

Furthermore, he asked that she not be touched by a single rain drop or eat anything that could upset her stomach in the least lest she become ill. She was always accompanied by bodyguards and ladies-in-waiting so she did not have to do a single thing herself but merely issue an imperious command that it be done. As much as she enjoyed her clothes and other trappings of her new station in life, she was bored and unsatisfied.

From her window, she watched as her husband would ride off with his band of devoted and handsome young men. While he was gone, she would go riding on her horse with her bodyguard. The servants warned her that she could be hurt but she raged that she could take care of herself and that if anybody got in her way, she would dismiss them or order that they be flogged. While riding, she complained to the knight that she felt undesirable and unloved. With her eyes glistening with tears, she asked why she was being abandoned and neglected. Touched by her sorrow and overall hotness, he took her out . . . riding every day.

Alas, it was only a matter of time before the prince found out that his wife was thrashing and moaning in bed and it wasn't because of a small pea. When the prince found out, he merely exiled the knight and withdrew from his wife, saying that he could not bring himself to sleep with her.

Lana could not understand why the prince did not punish her. She dressed in her servant's garb and rode out to see where her husband was spending his nights away from her. She found him in the arms of his best archer and his closest advisor.

She screamed at him when he got home, calling him a fraud. "I thought you were a prince. What kind of prince does that?"

"And what kind of princess who claims that a pea disturbs her sleep could sleep so soundly in the arms of a man who rides with her every single day while I'm gone?"

She ignored the underlying accusation of cheating and fraud. "That test is a completely insane demand. It's not my fault that you had such high expectations! How could you possibly ask such an impossible thing of me? Besides, we're married and swore that you loved me and me alone. I demand that you fulfill your duties to me!"

Clark was quiet for a while before he said, "You are not the girl I thought I was marrying and I am not the man you thought you were marrying. We're both frauds. I am sorry for my part in this. Let us end this farce and separate."

She refused and went so mad with rage that eventually the only room she could dwell was one lined with mattresses.

The End