The fairy tale world awaited its new princess. A lot of effort was made in preparation for her arrival, but nobody had told them she was chubby. None of the preparations were of any use: the dresses, the dances, the typical fairy tale, not even the traditional love story with the prince. None of it! They thought that there must have been a mistake, but the Princess-Making Machine confirmed 100 times over that Goldie was, in fact, the Perfect Princess.

She drove the palace tailor crazy! He was used to creating luxurious dresses with tiny waists. He didn’t know how to make sports clothes, trousers or shirts.
She drove the noble ladies at court crazy when she turned down the handsome and much-admired Prince they had lined up for her to marry and instead chose a short and scrawny boy who made her laugh.

She drove the kingdom’s generals crazy when the country went to war: instead of waiting patiently in the palace, she decided to lead the battle herself.
Even the scribes went crazy! They had to find a book with enough pages to write her story.

But she filled every page of the thick book with her stories and adventures, funny incidents and wise words; with interesting people she would like to meet, and fantastic friends who would never have thought they could appear in a Princess fairy tale. There had never been room for them before in the thin books.

What few realised was that all the other beautiful, slim princesses were bored of always living the same old silly love-at-first-sight stories, in which they never did anything interesting, mainly because these simple stories were the only ones that fitted into the elegant books. So, when they read the story of Goldie, the chubby princess, they were extremely jealous and thought: that’s a perfect princess!

Translated by Saffron Whitney, Connie Ireland and Catrinel-Elena Galan, Manchester Metropolitan University