Then they knew that the lady they had lodged was a real Princess, since she had felt the one small pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather-beds, for it was quite impossible for any one but a true Princess to be so tender.

This line comes from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” first published in Danish in the 1830s as part of his early collections of “Eventyr” (fairy tales). In the story, a prince insists on marrying a “real” princess, but cannot verify any candidate’s authenticity. One stormy night a young woman arrives at the palace claiming royal birth; the queen tests her by placing a pea beneath a towering stack of mattresses and feather-beds. The next morning the woman reports she could not sleep because of something hard in the bed—proof, in the tale’s logic, of her extraordinary sensitivity and thus her true princesshood.

The sentence crystallizes the tale’s satirical premise: “true” nobility is treated as an innate, almost absurdly physical trait—extreme delicacy—rather than a matter of conduct or character. Andersen plays with the arbitrariness of social markers and the desire to authenticate status through tests that are both theatrical and irrational. Read straight, it endorses the idea that refinement is inborn; read ironically, it exposes how flimsy the criteria for rank can be. The princess’s tenderness becomes a symbol of hypersensitivity—privilege as fragility—inviting readers to question whether such “proof” is meaningful or merely a convenient story society tells to justify hierarchy.

“Then they knew she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds.”
“Then they saw that she was a true princess, for she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds.”
“Then they knew that she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea through all those mattresses and feather-beds.”