Princess & the Pea-tition

Written by Kim Nguyen

Read by Kim Nguyen with Neel Williams and Ken Marcus

Once upon a time, in a land nearish to here, on a dark and stormy night, the Queen and King of this land were having a quiet night in. While catching up on some of her reality dating shows, the Queen heard a knock on the castle doors. She opened them to find a young woman standing in the rain. The girl looked quite a fright. Her clothes soaked. Her hair drenched. Her shoes filled with squishy mud and one small, sharp rock.

The girl was leaning on the castle, removing that small, sharp rock from her shoe, when she said, “Hello. My name is Princess. I’m backpacking through your land, and I’ve found myself caught in this terrible rainstorm. Your giant castle seemed like a nice, safe place. Would you mind if I stayed the night?”

“A real princess? Oh my!” said the Queen.

“Oh no. I’m not a princess. I’m just a girl named Princess,” Princess replied.

“Very well, we shall see,” said the Queen. The beginning of a little scheme twinkled in her eye.

You see, the Queen had been looking for a “real princess” for many years now. She had no heirs and therefore no one to take the throne after her. And while the Queen had met with many charming and seemingly qualified young women, only a “real princess” could become the next leader of their land. Moreover, their land had quite particular traditions and an even more peculiar way of determining who was a “real princess.” It was called “The Official Real Princess Test.” 

The Queen welcomed Princess into her castle and went to ready the guest room. But first, she made a quick stop at the royal safe where she found “The Official Real Princess Test” manual. She gathered all the materials for the test and followed the protocol exactly as described in the book.

On the guest bed she stacked twenty mattresses on top of each other. Then she added twenty more plushy feather beds on top of that. The giant pile of mattresses and feather beds almost reached the ceiling. Keep in mind, this is a castle, so it had really high ceilings. Then for the final touch, the most important part of “The Official Real Princess Test,” the Queen placed a single green pea underneath all of that.

The Queen showed Princess to the teetering tower of mattresses and plushy feather beds and told her that was where she would sleep for the night.

“You want me to sleep up there?” asked Princess. 

“Yes,” replied the Queen.

“All the way up there?” Princess asked again, hoping for a different answer. 

“Yes,” answered the Queen.  

Knowing that she had nowhere else to stay, Princess sighed and said her thank yous and goodnights. Then she climbed up the ladder to the top of the teetering tower of plushy feather beds and mattresses.

The next morning at breakfast the Queen waited anxiously for Princess to wake up. Princess shuffled into the breakfast nook looking like she hadn’t slept a wink. Bags under her eyes. Yawning loudly. And seeming a bit grumpy.

“Soooo. How did you sleep?” asked the Queen.

“I didn’t sleep at all!” Princess griped as she poured herself some coffee.

“Ahhhh! You’ve passed “The Official Real Princess Test!” the Queen squealed with relief and glee.

“I put a green pea under all those mattresses and feather beds. Only a real princess would be so delicate and dainty to feel a tiny little pea under all that. Now, you will be our next queen and lead our land!”

Princess sipped her coffee, taking in this news. She looked hard at the Queen.

“What?” she asked flatly. 

“Princess! You passed the pea test. You are a real princess. And now you can lead my land after me. Isn’t this wonderful?!” exclaimed the Queen.

Princess looked alarmed. She paused and then said, “The reason I didn’t sleep was because you made me get on top of a ridiculous, giant tower of mattresses and feather beds. So the very real fear of falling off and breaking my arms and legs kept me up all night.”

“Oh,” said the Queen.

“And just so I understand, you’re going to find your next queen by having people sleep on a pea?”

“Yes, that’s how we’ve always found our leaders here.”  

“All the queens have done this?”

“I slept on a pea. The previous queen slept on a pea. The one before her. And so on…” 

“How do you pick your kings?” asked Princess.

“We see which young man can fit the most hard-boiled eggs in his mouth,” said the Queen. 

“Wow. That is incredibly dumb,” laughed Princess.

“Well. It’s just how we’ve always done things here,” blustered the Queen, somewhat offended. 

“Oh, come on. There must be a better way,” said Princess.

“Nope. This is the only way. It’s what we’ve always done. Good day to you!” the Queen yelled as she hustled Princess out the castle, slamming the doors in her surprised face.

Princess sat on the castle steps outside and thought to herself, “That was really weird. But also, I know there’s a better way to find a leader for this land.”

And so, Princess got up and kept backpacking through this odd country with its particular and peculiar traditions, and as she walked, she thought about a better way to pick a leader. She wandered for miles and miles and miles just thinking and thinking and thinking. Through the cute little towns, into the even cuter fairy forest, under the creaky troll bridge, past the grumpy garden gnomes, around the tiny toadstools, and in woods filled with singing woodland creatures, she never stopped thinking about a better way to find a leader.    

Then, suddenly, she had a brilliant idea. She said out loud to no one, “We should have a leader chosen by the people and creatures of this land — someone who represents all of them.”

And then she said, “I should stop talking to myself and do something with this idea.”

So she wrote her idea down on a piece of paper. Immediately, she began another journey through the land, talking to all the people and the creatures about this idea of elected representative leadership.

She talked to the townsfolk in all the cute little towns.

“Okay, so you’re not a real princess?” asked the townsfolk.

“No, I’m just a girl named Princess. But I have a really good idea,” said Princess.

“So you want to elect someone who represents all of us? And everybody gets one vote?” asked the townsfolk.

Princess nodded.  

“But did you think about how this kind of government could potentially be fueled by corruption, unqualified candidates and the ignorance of a general electorate?”

“No. Those are good points. But you’ve been picking princesses with peas,” she replied with a shrug.  

“Yeah, that is dumb. Let’s try this new idea!” yelled the townsfolk.

Princess continued her journey to tell even more people and creatures about her idea. She found the fairies flying around the fairy forest.

“Out with the pea thing! This is so much better!” said the flying fairies.

She went to see the trolls under the creaky troll bridge.

“GOODTZ! YES. LIKE IDEA. GRUNTZ!” grunted the trolls.  

She sat with the grumpy garden gnomes who sat on their tiny toadstools.

“A leader who represents us? Sure. We’re in,” grumped the garden gnomes.

She went to the woods filled with the singing woodland creatures.

“Lalallallaaaa! We loooove this idea!” sang the singing woodland creatures.

She asked them all to sign her piece of paper with the idea if they agreed. It was called “The Petition to Eliminate Pea-Based Government in Favor of Elected Representative Leadership in This Land.” Or “The Pea-tition” for short.

And sign they did. Because almost all of the people and creatures of the land were not into the whole picking-princesses-by-pea thing. Everyone wanted to have a leader who was chosen by them.

Except Pete the Pea Farmer.

“Hold on, hold on, hold on. Now let’s not throw all these peas out the window. We’ve been doing this pea thing for forever. I, for one, am really into picking leaders with peas,” said Pete the Pea Farmer, as he counted all the gold coins he received from pea sales to the castle.

Pete the Pea Farmer did not sign The Pea-tition.

But pretty much everyone else in the land did. Princess’ petition had so many pages of signatures she had to stack all the pages in a wooden cart and roll it behind her. She had so many pages that she had to get one of the larger trolls to sit on top to keep the paper from blowing away. So many people and creatures signed that the pages stacked and stacked and stacked until they became a tower of paper taller than the tower of mattresses and featherbeds of “The Official Real Princess Test.” But with a troll on top instead of a pea underneath.

And so, when she felt like she had enough signatures, Princess decided to take her petition to the Queen and King. All the people and the creatures of the land followed Princess as she rolled The Pea-tition, now a skyscraper of paper, to the castle doors.

She knocked. No one answered. She knocked again. A little louder this time.

The castle door cracked open, and the Queen and King peered out.  

“Oh hello. Princess? Was it?” asked the Queen.

“Hey. Yeah, it’s me again,” Princess said. “So we think how you choose leaders is dumb. I’ve got this really tall stack of paper here that basically says we want to elect our next leader and have them represent everyone in the land. Instead of that whole pea thing.”

“I AM FOR THE PEA THING!”  yelled Pete the Pea Farmer from the back of the crowd.

“PIPE DOWN, PETE!” the people and creatures of the land yelled back at Pete the Pea Farmer.

The Queen and King looked up and up and up at the towering stack of paper. The troll waved at them from the top.

“But we have always done it one way. We only know how to do the pea thing,” said the Queen.

“Sure, but there is a better way. And we can change it,” said Princess.

The Queen and King looked up and up and up at the towering stack of paper again. And then they looked at the large crowd of all of the people and creatures of their land gathered at their castle doors. They looked at each other and nodded.

It was a reasonable idea. In fact, it was a great idea! Way better than the whole pea under a bunch of mattresses and feather beds thing. And better than the whole hard-boiled eggs in young men’s mouths thing, too. They agreed to hold free and fair elections in their land from that day forth.

And so, in their first free and fair election, the people and creatures of the land chose Princess to be their president. Then in a peaceful transition of power, the Queen and King became regular citizens, equal to everyone else. The King was secretly relieved because he didn’t want to see any more young men almost choke to death on hard-boiled eggs.

A girl named Princess became their very first president. President Princess led justly, kindly and to the best of her abilities until the end of her term. Now The Pea-tition is displayed in a case in a museum, if no one has stolen it. And this is a true story.