In Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea,” twenty mattresses are placed above the pea. The tale also places twenty featherbeds on top of the mattresses, creating an extraordinarily tall bed.
The queen uses the hidden pea as a test of the visiting woman’s identity. The next morning, the woman says that she slept badly because something hard disturbed her. Her sensitivity convinces the royal family that she is a true princess.
The story was first published in 1835 in Andersen’s first collection of fairy tales. Its exact bedding count is often misremembered because adaptations frequently simplify the stack or show a different number of mattresses.
The pea itself is tiny, but the test is deliberately exaggerated. Andersen uses the absurdly high bed to create a comic fairy-tale test of refinement and royal status. The story is much shorter than many of his later tales and is one of his most frequently adapted works.