"I'm Cordelia.  I'm twenty-two years old.  I work at Victoria's Secret.  My dad owns a law firm, and I always get what I want," she boasted proudly and gave the other girls a crooked smirk. 

"So tell me why you are here."

"I'm here because Daddy said he would buy me a new car if I came,"  Cordelia snickered.

"I see.  So you don't have problems in your life?"

"My life is perfect,"  Cordelia bragged.

"Well then, you wouldn't mind listening to a story then would you girls?"  Cordelia rolled her eyes.  "Okay then, where should I start?

This story is called King Thrushbeard.

This is story about a beautiful princess who thought that she was better than everyone just because of her looks and being royalty.  As it came time for the princess to get married, her father, the King, arranged a fantastic feast and invited all of the eligible bachelors in the country ranging from kings to members of the gentry.  Once the feast ended, he lined the suitors up and had his daughter pick her husband-to-be, but all did not go as the King had planned.

The princess was not pleased with any of the suitors her father had gathered, and picked them off one by one telling them that they weren’t good enough for her.  They were either too fat, too skinny, or too pale.  But as the princess came upon one of the kings who had an overgrown beard, the princess pointed and laughed and told the king he 'had  a beak of a thrush'."  It was because of that, the story is named King Thrushbeard.  "As was the king from that day on.

After the princess had berated all of her guests, the King was infuriated.  He was so mad at his daughter that he decided she would marry the next beggar who came to his castle.  Only days after that terrible celebration had taken place, a fiddler came to the castle hoping to earn a little money.  As soon as the King heard of the fiddler's coming, he smiled with excitement and immediately sent for the fiddler to come in.  He also called on his daughter and a priest and married the two on the spot. 

As you can imagine, the princess was infuriated with her father’s decision, but the King held firm and sent the newly married couple on their way. 

As the old fiddler and his young wife made their way to their home, they passed many wonderful views, a beautiful forest, a quaint little town, and a fine green meadow.  While passing each of these places, the princess was excited to see such wonderful sites and asked to whom they belonged, and each time the dirty fiddler replied that those beautiful places belonged to King Thrushbeard.  The princess sighed each time and wished that she wouldn't have made fun of King Thrushbeard and had picked him for her husband, instead of being stuck with a mangy fiddler.

Finally, they arrived at the fiddler’s home.  The princess was in horror at how small and dirty the fiddler’s house was and demanded the fiddler say it wasn’t her new home.  But she soon learned that it was, indeed, her new home.  She even had to duck down in order to get through the door! 

Once inside, the fiddler told his new wife to make supper, but the princess had no idea how to cook and so the fiddler had to help her, even though the old man was weary from the journey.  They ate a small meal and went to bed then got up early the next morning so that the fiddler could go to work and the princess had to keep watch of the house. 

This was soon the daily routine, until they ran out of food.  The man told his wife that she would have to start working and make money to get more food.  He offered four different jobs to her, but she wasn’t able to do any of them. 

First she tried to weave baskets, but she was cut by the willow fibers and bled terribly.  Second, she tried to spin cloth, but was again cut and bled profusely.  By this time the fiddler had grown impatient.  Third, she tried selling pans on the street and was successful for a couple days, until a drunk ran his horse through her pans and smashed them to pieces.  The princess was very disheartened.  Finally, the fiddler got her a job working in the kitchens of his King's castle.  She worked very hard and made little money. 

One night, there was a huge party for the prince‘s wedding.  The princess was intrigued by the beauty of the festival and looked on eagerly until someone asked her to dance.  She was shocked when she saw the face of King Thrushbeard and tried to run from his grip, but during her escape, her pockets ripped and everything spilled out of them.  The princess was embarrassed as the crowd laughed at her and ran out of the castle, but as she was closing in on the steps out of the castle, King Thrushbeard stopped her again and told her not to be afraid.  He told her that he was the fiddler whom she had married and that he had put her through everything just to teach her to be humble.  The princess felt more ashamed than ever, but the King said to her that she should be happy because today, they would have a proper wedding, and they lived happily ever after."