2669. On becoming a princess

I have always been a bit cynical about these Commoners who marry a Prince and become a Princess? I’m sure there’s a great deal of ambition and lust for prestige hidden in there somehow. They marry a Prince and before you can blink they have at the very least become a Duchess.

I had no idea it would happen to me.

I was at university pursuing a degree in Etruscan Pottery. There was a bachelor Prince in the class chasing after the same advanced degree. He was handsome! Handsome, rich, titled, and available! What more could a common girl such as me want? Of course all the other females in the class went gar-gar. It was sickening to see grown women flouncing about trying to get noticed by someone with a title.

Then something strange began to happen. One by one these women were dying. It was poisoning apparently. There were seven deaths over the course of the academic year. It started around the time the Prince started dating me.

I had asked the Prince when he gets married what title would his wife get, and he said she would become a Countess or maybe a Duchess. But if his older brother died – who was the heir to the throne – then he (my Prince) would become the heir and I would become a Princess.

 Would you believe? Having married the Prince, here I am a Countess already. Good things take time. I’m quietly working on becoming a Princess.

2215. Wonderful chicken

(The final day, Day 7 of a week of retelling traditional folktales.)

A woman gave birth to a chicken. One day the chicken spread a cloth on the ground and it turned into a palace and the chicken changed into a beautiful princess.

A prince fell in love with the princess, and when that happened the palace changed back into a cloth and the princess back into a chicken.

The prince took the chicken and made a nest for it next to his bed. When the chicken once again changed into a princess, the prince gathered the feathers and threw them into the fire. The spell was broken.

And they all lived happily ever after.

2211. Two rings and a fish

(Day 4 of a week of retelling traditional folktales.)

Flora and Fiona were twins. They both fancied the Handsome Prince. The Handsome Prince felt hounded. They were stalking him.

The Prince came up with an idea (which could be construed as being unusual). He threw two gold rings into the sea.

“The first to find one of the rings I will marry and she will become a princess.”

A commotion followed the announcement. Flora and Fiona practically drowned each other in their hurry to get into the ocean. No ring was found.

“Perhaps a fish swallowed the rings,” suggested the Prince. “A holy mackerel if I’m not mistaken. Or perhaps a big mouthed bass.”

Out came the fishing rods. Months of intense fishing followed. Suddenly…

Fiona caught a fish. It was a mackerel. It was the biggest mackerel the world had ever seen. Fiona was excited. The Handsome Prince was worried.

The fish was opened. Behold!

Just fish guts.

2207. I Spied: Queen Elizabeth II

(Stories posted on Mondays on this blog – at least for a while – will present famous people I once spotted, albeit from a distance.)

It was 1970. Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, and youthful Prince Charles and Princess Anne were to visit the Sunken Garden in the city of Napier’s Marine Parade. The Queen had instituted the “walkabout”. She would walk along the street with a barricade preventing subjects from getting too close, and offer a gloved hand to thrilled and glowing underlings spontaneously selected.

Napier is an eastern coastal city half way up New Zealand’s North Island. It is best known for a devastating earthquake in 1931 that killed lots of people. My mother was in it! As the city was completely rebuilt in the 1930s, it is an outstanding example of the Art Deco style of the time. And on the seafront it has a sunken garden with a floral clock.

I lived within biking distance from the sunken garden. In those days you could lean your bike against a lamp post and it would still be there when you came back. My friend said, “Let’s go see the queen.” It had never occurred to me to do that, so we hopped on our bikes and set off.

My friend and I had a technique to get to the front of a crowd, and indeed on this day the crowd lining the street was impassable. We needed to get to the front. In those days the Catholic Mass was in Latin and we had both been altar boys. Separated from each other by a few yards we started calling out Latin to each other as if we were having a conversation in a foreign language (even though we didn’t have a clue what it meant). The crowd stepped aside. We important foreigners walked to the front for a brilliant view.

AND… HERE THEY COME! The queen toddled past to applause followed by Charles and Anne. Prince Philip lagged behind. He clearly too often stopped to chat to people. As he passed the lady next to me called out, “Hey Duke, come over here!” He turned, wagged his finger at her, and said “Aha! Aha!”

Oh my goodness me! That was the day Prince Philip said “Aha! Aha!” and I saw…

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second

1326. A handsome prince or two

Bodice and Eunice were two relatively unattractive princesses who were into hats in a big way. They were sisters.

One day a handsome prince came to the castle and Bodice and Eunice were on their best behaviour – he was so handsome. Bodice wore a large hat with fruit on it, whereas Eunice’s hat sported pinecones and fluffy rabbits’ tails. The handsome prince found them relatively unattractive (both the princesses and the hats). When he was offered the hand of either one in marriage he almost spewed his guts out.

He threw a golden ring into the castle’s huge goldfish pond, and said he would marry whoever found the ring – princess or not.

Bodice and Eunice set to work, draining the fishpond and gutting all the fish. No luck. The ring was not to be found. There were fish guts everywhere, and the place stank.

The brother of Bodice and Eunice, whose name was Bevan (you haven’t heard anything of him until now) was walking along near the fishpond, and he saw a man hiding behind a bush.

“Pssst!” said the man behind the bush. He gave Bevan the golden ring. “Show this to the handsome prince.”

The handsome prince was called forth. Bevan showed him what he had been given. The handsome prince looked remarkably like the man behind the bush.

They lived happily ever after.

932. Arabian Nights in summary

Princess Connie knew that if she didn’t act immediately, the prince from the distant kingdom would fall for a princess in a neighbouring kingdom, and that could spell disaster for her and her eleven brothers. So she threw on her finest robes, had a servant saddle her horse, and rode off ready to capture her prince.

But the neighbouring princess had similar ideas and was also on her carpet prancing about trying to impress the prince, and the prince’s father, who was the king, stepped in and announced that the prince wasn’t really a prince at all but was the illegitimate son of a widow that he had once taken pity on. With that, the neighbouring princess said enough is enough and went back home, because she had no desire to marry a commoner. And then the widow appeared and said that the father of her son was in fact the king of another distant kingdom which was very famous. So the neighbouring princess missed out, and Princess Connie said “Ha! Ha! Ha! Now the real prince is all mine.”

But the prince had already fallen in love with the daughter of the local bread maker, and she had been adopted, as it turned out, and was a princess of a very very VERY wealthy kingdom. So they got married, and had a lot of children, and now there are princes and princesses everywhere, and they’re having a hell of a difficult time trying to marry them all off.

And Princess Connie is just an old spinster, because not even one of the superfluous princes wants to marry someone so old, and the other princess (the one on the carpet) is also a disgruntled old maid.

To listen to the story being read click HERE!

837. The royal pig

Once there was a beautiful princess, called Gabriellina. Her hair shone golden as the sun. Her skin was white as fresh snow. Her lips were as red as a ripe near-rotting nectarine. Her breasts (As The Songs of Songs might say) were like a couple of sheep coming out of a sheep dip. This overall combination strikes me as quite ugly, but she wasn’t. She was… woof, woof, woof.

Her father, the king, had promised her hand in marriage to a pig. A pig! A real oink oink oink pig. Not a human being who acted like a pig, but a hog. One that makes bacon. A real grunting boar.

“You never know,” said the king. “The pig is possibly the victim of some horrible spell caste by a gruesome witch. He is really a handsome prince. The spell will be broken when my beautiful princess marries him.”

The wedding was arranged. The kingdom celebrated. There were street parties and everything.

The princess appeared on the balcony with her newly married pig. They kissed. The pig turned into a frog.

To listen to the story being read click HERE!