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The Princess and the Pea
Once we've fully explored this space, we can start varying the number of princesses.
Title text: Once we've fully explored this space, we can start varying the number of princesses.

    Explanation

    This comic references the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, in which a princess' claim to royal blood is tested by having her sleep atop twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds, with a single pea hidden underneath them. If she feels the pea through the stack of bedding, this somehow proves that she is a true princess, and she will be permitted to marry the prince. Randall imagines extending the story into a franchise, adding many sequels and reimaginings by varying the number of mattresses and peas. Randall has previously shown his dislike of movie sequels.

    The scenarios depicted range from a high mattress:pea ratio on the left to a high pea:mattress ratio on the right. In the middle, the princess (here portrayed by a version of Hairbun in a pink princess dress) sleeps on a single mattress concealing a single pea, which might be considered a slightly more reasonable test of sensitivity than that in the original story. On the far left there is a mountain of mattresses with a single pea concealed amongst them, which would not be a particularly effective test, since there's no guarantee that the princess is sleeping anywhere near the pea, never mind on top of it. On the far right, she has a single mattress on a sea of peas, which would, again, be fairly useless, since the peas would be clearly visible. This would defeat the test, as the princess would know the peas are there and could just claim to have felt them even if she didn't. In the second right image, the princess has a normal bed with a single mattress, and has a bowl of peas, which she is eating. Since the pea(s) in the story are dried, uncooked peas, this would probably not be advisable. It also suffers from the same problem as the more extreme case.

    The title text takes things further by having different numbers of princesses sleeping in the bed (whether together or separately is unclear). This could provide a storyline where the real princess is discovered from a set of false princesses. Alternatively, it could result in multiple real princesses being discovered, leading to a polygamous marriage for the prince, which would be unusual for a European fairy tale. Or the princesses might get along famously and decide to do without the prince.

    Transcript

    [A graph is shown, showing the ratio between princesses and peas. In the middle is a thick line labelled with '1:1mattress-to-pea ratio'. Around the graph extends outward, with on the left line a label is marked 'many mattresses per pea', and the right line has a similar label reading 'many peas per mattress'. Below are pictures, showing various images. From left to right, they are: A princess hiking up a mountain of mattresses with an arrow indicating a pea being inserted somewhere in the distance, a princess waving at the top of a massive pile of mattresses on a bed with an arrow indicating a pea being inserted at the bottom of the pile, a princess on one bed with an arrow indicating a pea being inserted under the mattress, a princess eating a bowl of peas on the same bed, and a princess on a bed on a mountain of peas which are spilling on to the top of the mattress.]

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