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Sunday 16 June 2024

'The Princess and the Peanut' by Luann Castle

'Stop being so sensitive!' Spittle accompanied the Queen’s words as she hurled a disgusted look at her daughter. 'One needs a thick skin to lead a nation. If you don’t grow one soon, I’ll be passing my crown down to your brother, the amateur clown.' The princess knew it was true that she had too much sympathy. She had just given her favorite sweater to a peasant shivering outside the palace. But she didn’t like being called names constantly by her family, so that night she planned to prove that the Queen herself could be very hypersensitive. Nobody was ever allowed to criticize her, for instance. The princess planted a tiny pea—well, in truth, it was a shelled peanut—under the Queen’s forty fur duvets. Next morning the Queen woke up purple with bruises and ordered the Princess to the dungeon. However, the people who had reaped the benefit of the kindnesses of the Princess rioted, placing the Queen in the dungeon with a can of peanuts and one cotton blanket. They placed the crown upon the head of the Princess. Of course, the Princess being the Princess began to feel so sorry for the Queen that she commanded her release. That’s when the Queen locked the Princess in the tower that spiraled high into the air and put the key in the peanut can.

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