With apologies to Hans Christian Andersen...
Once upon a time, there was a prince named Edward who wanted to fall in love and marry. It would have to be with a real princess though, his parents decreed.
They traveled around the whole world looking for her, but every time he met a princess there was always something amiss. There were plenty of princesses but not one of them was quite to his taste. Something was always the matter. They were too stupid, too bony or too vain. The Queen decided that they just weren't real princesses. So the prince returned home, very sad and lonely.
One evening, a storm broke over the kingdom. The lightning flashed, the thunder roared, and the rain came down in bucketfuls. In the midst of this horrible storm, someone knocked on the castle door and Edward himself went to answer it.
When he opened the door, Edward's eyes lit on a beautiful though bedraggled and thoroughly soaked and shaking maiden. Water ran down her hair and her clothes in streams. It flowed in through the heels of her shoes and out through the toes. Her clothes were so soaked that there was no clue as to how they had once looked but the way they clung to the womanly virtues of her body left Edward's mouth dry. Edward looked up into a face filled with intelligence and humor at her own predicament.
"Forgive me, my lord, for appearing before you in such a state. I am Marian, the lady in waiting for Princess Chandra. There is a tree down in the road at the bottom of the hill and she sent me to say she is going home. We will return again in a fortnight."
"They sent you up the hill in this storm?" Edward cried in outrage. "You could have been hurt or taken ill. Come in, we'll take care of you."
"But Princess Chandra will be waiting for me to return," she protested.
"I will send a foot soldier to tell them you will stay here until the weather clears."
Edward took her by the hand and drew Marian further into the castle, rubbing her cold hand between his own very warm hands. He could think only of getting the cold and soaked clothes off of her and warming her.
"What have we here?" The Queen had arrived. In an instant, Edward knew what he must do.
"Mother, this is Princess Marian. Her carriage arrived at a tree down in the road so she sent it home after a groomsman escorted her to the door."
Marian started to protest but Prince Edward squeezed her hand. She looked up into his eyes and closed her mouth. The Queen swept forward.
"You poor brave dear, come in. We'll get you some dry, warm clothes then we'll sup together in front of a roaring fire and you will spend the night with us."
Marian was swept away with just a moment for a puzzled glance over her shoulder at Edward. It wasn't long though before they were all seated near a roaring fire and supping on a rich venison stew.
She and Prince Edward spent the evening by the fire talking, laughing and playing draughts. The Queen was pleased at the comradery she saw between the two but she still thought it necessary to make sure this was a real princess.
"We'll find that out quickly enough," thought the old Queen, but she didn't say a word out loud.
She hurried to the guest room and took all the bedclothes off the bed; then on the bare bedstead she put a pea. On top of the pea she had twenty mattresses laid; and on top of the twenty mattresses, twenty eiderdown quilts. That was the bed on which Marian found herself expected to sleep that night.
