Nina In New York: Turns Out The Princess And The Pea Is Basically The Worst Story Ever Written

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

One of the great joys of parenthood is being able to share with my daughter the things I treasured as a child—particularly, books. Now that she's two, we're finally starting to graduate out of the simple picture books and dabble in some of my favorite old stories. There's Angelina, the determined mouse ballerina. There's Peter Rabbit and the Beatrix Potter works. Of course, Corduroy has lost no appeal over the years. And I am just totally freaking out with anticipation for the day I can set her up with Eloise. It's fun to dig into my mental library and come up with new ideas for books to which she's ready to be introduced. It's a trip down memory lane! A nostalgic tour of the media that shaped my childhood.

So when I downloaded an audio iBook of The Princess and the Pea for my child, I thought it might be charming. It's one of the less scary fairy tales, as I recalled. Princesses, check. Witches? Negative. Evil stepmothers? None. Death? Nein. All systems go.

Here's the thing about this story, in case anyone has forgotten: it's actually the worst. Completely terrible. Thoroughly, utterly lacking in any redeeming qualities. Here's how it goes: a prince wants to marry a princess. But not, like, any dumb, old princess you can find in the castle trailer park down the lane. He wants a real princess. His parents, relieved that their son appears to be heterosexual and not in love with his own sister, send him on a journey across many kingdoms to find a suitable wife. Only, there's something wrong with every alleged princess he encounters. Maybe this one chews with her mouth open. Maybe this one sings too loudly. Maybe this one keeps dragons and that one has too many opinions. Probably a few of them were fat. Anyway, he feels like maybe none of them are even legit, which to his obsessive, fragile ego seems like a reasonable conclusion, and so he returns home unwed. Not long after, there's a big storm and a knock at the gate. For some strange reason, the King himself goes outside in the rain to open it and finds a sopping wet girl who claims to be a princess. Despite her appearance (because everyone knows princesses get caught alone in storms as often as kings answer doors), they let her in and tell her they'll put her up for the night. Sensing an opportunity for her suspiciously choosy prince, the Queen takes it upon herself to set up a little test. She stealthily places a single pea underneath a crap ton of mattresses and featherbeds and tells her guest to climb up and sleep atop the giant pile. The girl obliges because I guess royalty is used to kinky garbage like this, and when she comes down to breakfast the next morning the Queen wryly asks her how she slept. The princess says she slept terribly, that something was wrong with the mattresses and featherbeds and she hardly got a wink, which in my book makes her an incredibly rude houseguest. I mean, here she is a rando off the street, and the actual King and Queen of the land give her a room in their castle and instead of being like, "uh, I slept fine thanks for everything I'll send you some flowers tomorrow," she whines about her accommodations. Of course, her lack of manners is superseded by her exceptional physical and psychological frailty and high-maintenance needs, and the whole family is delighted to find out she is, indeed, one of them. Confident in the knowledge that she, too, has been inbred to the point of near-paralyzing infirmity, the prince falls in love with the princess on the spot. The princess naturally falls in love with him right back and the two are married and live happily ever after and she never gets to whatever destination she'd been waylaid from during the rainstorm but who cares because he put a ring on it the end.

What. The. Eff.

I guess the moral of the story is that it pays to be an unapologetic pain in the butt. Or that true love can be found through an exacting strategy of elitism and sadism. The squeaky wheel gets the prince. Men like a delicate flower. And what's with this prince? Does he actually want to find a wife? I mean, picky is fine for flings, but it honestly doesn't sound to me like he has any interest in a lasting union with any depth. His criteria seems completely mercurial and flimsy, and I'm thinking there are some obvious mommy issues to be explored. Oh, man, is this princess in for it with that mother-in-law. But you know what? I don't even feel sorry for her, because she was on her way somewhere and winds up sticking around forever because she passed the mistreatment test and was selected to be wed by a complete stranger. Didn't you have somewhere to be? Someone to notify? I guess it's possible she was running from something, given that she arrived alone in the middle of the night. But in that case, she's got some serious baggage which I think she's avoiding, choosing instead to jump into a hasty marriage with a clearly horrible family. You've got to take care of you, girl. Either way, I can't imagine this will end well and it's hard to scrounge up any sympathy for any of these jerks.

I'm going to have to start screening these stories before we dive in. I don't want my daughter to miss out on the canon, but at the very least I'm going to have to be prepared to answer some questions as we go.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!