fairytale variations
Apr. 13th, 2013 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird1Discovered this evening that, despite having grown up in the same house, my sisters and I have heard different versions of The Princess and the Pea – and had no idea that the other version existed.
In my sisters' version, the queen tests the girl to find out if she's princess material, by placing a pea underneath umpteen mattresses and finding out if she can detect the pea through the mattresses or not.
And the girl, who is princess material, does indeed detect the pea. And marries the prince! Hurrah!
In my version, the queen still tests the girl. But the girl can't feel the pea under the thousands of mattresses, because, let's face it, that's pretty much impossible.
But the servants (or animals, or the prince's sneaky little sister, depending on the version) like the girl. They think she's nice! So they sneak in and tell her all about the queen's plan – and in the morning, the girl makes sure to complain about how badly she slept, thus proving with her awesome pea-detection skills that she's princess material. (Although, actually, she's just princess material because she's so darn nice.)
My sisters had never heard of a version where the girl got help with detecting the pea. And I, although having heard versions with a whole bunch of different groups of people helping the girl, had never heard of a version where she didn't get help at all.
Weird, huh?
So – show of hands? Who's heard of which version? And has anyone heard of both?
In my sisters' version, the queen tests the girl to find out if she's princess material, by placing a pea underneath umpteen mattresses and finding out if she can detect the pea through the mattresses or not.
And the girl, who is princess material, does indeed detect the pea. And marries the prince! Hurrah!
In my version, the queen still tests the girl. But the girl can't feel the pea under the thousands of mattresses, because, let's face it, that's pretty much impossible.
But the servants (or animals, or the prince's sneaky little sister, depending on the version) like the girl. They think she's nice! So they sneak in and tell her all about the queen's plan – and in the morning, the girl makes sure to complain about how badly she slept, thus proving with her awesome pea-detection skills that she's princess material. (Although, actually, she's just princess material because she's so darn nice.)
My sisters had never heard of a version where the girl got help with detecting the pea. And I, although having heard versions with a whole bunch of different groups of people helping the girl, had never heard of a version where she didn't get help at all.
Weird, huh?
So – show of hands? Who's heard of which version? And has anyone heard of both?