This real-life princess tried 'sleeping on a pea' to see if she really was royal

After dreaming of an “ordinary life”, Norway’s Princess Martha Louise decided to put her royal status to the ultimate test — she tried sleeping on a pea. Just like the fairy tale. 

“When I was little, I didn’t feel like a princess,” the 46-year-old royal told Expressen.

“I wanted to know if I was really a princess. So when I was six or seven, I tried the test. I tried to sleep on a pea, just like in the story, and see if I noticed it through the mattress. When I didn’t find any bruises, I was terrified.”

The princess, who is fourth in line to the throne, is promoting her latest book Born Sensitive, which touches on how she has struggled with insecurity her entire life.

 “I felt that I was not good enough, I didn’t understand why people looked up to me just because I was a princess — I hadn’t done anything, it’s just the status I was born into.”

Martha is a mother to three daughters and the eldest child of Norway’s King Harald V and Queen Sonia.

She married writer Ari Behn in 2002 but the couple separated in September 2016.