Once upon a time there was a Princess. Actually, she wasn’t a Princess at all but she believed that she was.
When she was a little girl, an old man said to her,
‘If you behave like a Princess, people will treat you like a Princess.’
What he really wanted to say was,
‘Treat people the way you wish to be treated yourself’
but his message got mixed up because he was old and not very sound of mind.
The girl, who dreamed her whole life about being a Princess, became one.

The Princess was not a nice Princess. In fact, she was jealous, exacting and demanding but this is because she thought that was the way princesses behaved. She believed that she should be surrounded by beautiful things at all times. She didn’t do things that she thought were beneath her.
The Princess made new friends every few weeks. She thought that her friends were jealous of her and so she got rid of them and moved onto new ones. The Princess hated all her old friends. They were all horrible.

The Princess was married to The Prince. The Prince was a good man, with integrity and humour. Everyone loved The prince.

One day The Princess met a man on the street and fell in love with him. The man was not a Prince, but a man with no job and no money. He was a Pauper. He made her happy.
The Princess wanted to leave The Prince but she didn’t know how to. She wanted The Prince to do something wrong so that she could be angry, exacting and demanding and then she could leave him.
That night, The Princess found a new friend and took the friend to see The Prince. She thought that The Prince could become infatuated with the friend and this would allow the Princess to leave.
‘Look at how beautiful my friend is’ The Princess said to The Prince.
The Prince looked and agreed. The new friend was beautiful but she was not his wife.

A few weeks later, the friend visited again.
And again, The Princess said,
‘Look at my friend’s new shoes and dress. Isn’t she beautiful, wouldn’t you agree?
The Prince agreed. The friend was indeed beautiful but she wasn’t his wife.

The Princess desperately wanted to be with The Pauper and finally told The Prince that she was in love with someone else. The Prince was sad inside but knew that he could not keep the Princess if she did not want to stay and so he let her go. The Princess went to The Pauper and they lived happily until one day when the Pauper no longer wanted her.
The Princess was enraged. How dare this man not want her? She was a Princess!

She returned to The Prince and asked that he take her back, but The Prince knew that they could no longer be happy together.

A few months later, The Prince met the friend in the street and told her that he thought she was beautiful. The friend thought that the Prince was equally beautiful. So The Prince and the beautiful friend fell in love and decided to live happily ever after.

And The Princess hated the friend just as she had hated all her other friends. But deep in her heart, the Princess wanted to live Happily Ever After too. But she was jealous, exacting and demanding because she was a Princess and this was the way that she knew that Princesses behaved.

The End.