Choose from these exciting, original kids’ audio stories.

Clem the Detective Dog
Ralphie The Gopher
Sheriff Daisy & Deputy Bud
Rainbow of the Sioux
The Monotonia Chronicles
Tibbodnock Stories
Fiona the Smart Ghost
Ivan the Not-So-Terrible
Nikki the Invisible Girl
Sarabel to the Rescue

Princess Claria’s Choice

In the long, long-ago kingdom of Monotonia, the royal family was in trouble—big trouble. A musty old royal decree said that to protect the purity of their royal blood, all the Kings and Queens, princes and princesses, and dukes and duchesses had to marry within the royal family –like one of their own cousins. No bride or groom from farther outside the family would do. In fact, the decree said – here, let me read it to you: "Anyone who chooses a husband or wife from outside the family will be locked out of the palace forever, stripped of their rank and title, and made to live in a thatched hut with no heat."

Afraid of life as commoners with cold noses and toes, most royal family members obediently married their cousins, century after century. And that's how the trouble began—it didn't take very many centuries before all the royal family members not only looked very much the same, but thought the same, and had the same old family argument, over and over . . . and over.

Now, you've probably never heard of Monotonia. It was tiny triangle on the map, with dry, rocky soil, where carrots and beets grew much better than roses. Farmers tilled the fields, and merchants traveled the roads, selling rough clay pots and scratchy wool sweaters. Life for the Monotonians was as peaceful as it was dull... until... .   

One otherwise ordinary day, at the royal breakfast table, the King and Queen watched their three daughters have one of their usual arguments. "I must have the royal carriage to myself today," said Princess Lividia. "Our cousins plan to visit us, and they are so, so boring, I would rather watch the peasants weed the potato fields."

"No, I must have the royal carriage," said Princess Doria, " I had to talk to those pudding-headed boys all day the last visit when you went for a ride, and it's your turn to chit chat while I watch the pototoes grow."

"No, I should get to escape for once," said Princess Claria, the youngest. As usual, no one paid her any attention. "Oh, never mind. Is there no peach jam?" Claria looked glumly at her plate of toast while her sisters carried on arguing. Poor Claria--her family had begun to suspect that she was just a bit different from the rest of them. Perhaps it was that her golden brown hair curled, while the rest of theirs hung straight as straw. Or perhaps it was the way her blue-green eyes sparkled in the light, especially when she gazed out her turret window, looking far into the distance as if waiting for something.

But, back to the breakfast table. By now, the King and Queen had put their fingers into their ears to block the noise of Lividia and Doria's squabbling. Although they did this nearly every morning, the sausages this morning were particularly slippery, and the King was having trouble picking one up between his teeth. When the sausage skated across his plate and onto the floor, the King jumped from his chair, shouting "AAAGH!" The chair toppled over with a thud, and everyone looked up in shock. But instead of sitting down in meek embarrassment, the King grabbed a fork, waved it in the air as if it were a royal scepter, and shouted, "Enough of this squabbling! Something Must Be Done! Call in the royal advisors."

The advisors rushed in, their long robes billowing around them like the sails on a ship. The king said, “It's long past time our three daughters were married and no longer squabbling at my breakfast table! Yet they only yawn when their boy cousins speak to them. And our citizens are starting to fall asleep during our royal speeches. We need to – well you know, stir things up a little. Isn't there some way that this old rule making everyone in our family marry one another can be changed?” 

The advisors tugged on their beards, furrowed their brows, and looked at each other, each hoping one of the others would think up an idea. At last, one white-bearded, pointy-nosed old advisor opened his mouth: "Your highnesses, you, ahem, must realize that the very perfection of your family line depends on keeping out non-royal blood. Just look at the gleaming beauty of your gigantic front teeth; the imposing nature of your double chins; and your talent for, shall we say, animated debate."

"Yes, these are all the stupendous advantages," said the Queen. "But the King and I are agreed, as always. If our daughters are too bored to marry, then we'll never have grandchildren, and not one of these excellent features will be passed on!"

"That's right," said the King. "And even worse, they'll sit at my breakfast table every morning arguing about who gets to ride in the carriage and whether peach jam or orange marmalade tastes better. We repeat, Something Must Be Done. Now go away, and don't come back until you've found a way around that old royal decree."

After murmuring among themselves in the hallway, the advisors decided to spend a month at an expensive country house in a far corner of Monotonia, for which they ordered lots of wine, roast meat, and pastries. Unfortunately for them the king found out about their plans, and sent them to a thatched hut with no heat and lots of mice. After three cold nights, trumpets blasted to announce that the advisors had returned to the royal court. [Make trumpet sounds?] "We have, sahll we say, solved the problem!" the pointy nosed old advisor told the King and Queen.

“Your highnesses," began the shortest, roundest advisor, holding a handkerchief to his nose, "We have found a sentence near the bottom of the decree that should help your daughters marry someone else besides the cousins they find so dull. It says – achooo, excuse me, these ancient scrolls are so dusty – Ah yes: 'A princess may marry outside the family so long as the king and queen allow her completely free choice when picking her husband.'” The room went quiet.

The Queen said, "Do you really mean letting our royal daughters pick out any old husband. What if one comes home with a chimney sweep? Or a used-chariot salesman?" "Or," added the king with a shudder, "a man who isn't even from Monotonia?"

The advisors all looked down at their shoes, then up at the chandeliers. But at last old pointy nose spoke, so quietly that everyone had to lean forward to hear him: "Your highnesses – it might be the last chance to preserve peace at your breakfast table! Remember the boring cousins!" The King and Queen frowned, looking worried.

The next day, they issued a royal decree, saying that their three daughters were free to choose their own husbands. And, added the King to his daughters, "You'd better get to work pronto--I don't think I can live through another argument."   

Lividia and Doria wasted no time in beginning the husband search--and insisted on buying several new gowns for the effort. "Bye bye, blah cousins, I'm going to find a real man – in fact, the handsomest man in Monotonia," announced Lividia. "We'll make such a lovely pair," she said, admiring herself in the mirror as she tried to curl a lock of her stubbornly straight hair around her finger.

Hearing Lividia's wish, the King immediately sent out a royal search party to scour the country for handsome unmarried men. The searchers looked in every building and barn, and behind every beanstalk. They weighed men, they measured them, and they checked their teeth and hair. Then the searchers brought Monotonia's one hundred handsomest men back to the palace.

To showcase all this male beauty, the king and queen threw a spectacular ball, on the evening of a full moon. The grand ballroom was decorated with streamers of yellow orchids and silk ribbons, and musicians played tunes filled with longing and enchantment. Lividia danced and danced, until she had twirled around the floor with every one of her 100 suitors. As the morning light dawned, she announced her choice: Corwin, a dark-eyed, brown-haired fellow with a dimple in his chin that almost made her swoon.

Lividia and Corwin were married before the next full moon. Unfortunately Corwin hadn’t enough brains to fill a royal teacup, and spend more time at his mirror that Lividia spent at hers. The newlyweds ran out of things to say to each other three days into their honeymoon. Much later, Lividia found ways to bring other kinds of excitement into her life—but that’s for another story. 

Doria, the second royal daughter, decided she wasn’t going to end up with someone as dull as Corwin. She announced, "I'm going to choose as my husband the merriest man in Monotonia."  The King again sent out the royal search party. They stopped in at many a pub and party, until they'd rounded up 100 men who were fond of telling jokes and making merry far into the night.

This time, on the blackest of black nights, the King and Queen threw a banquet, in the Great Hall. A table as long as a sailing ship was set with the finest silver and crystal. Waiters brought out huge tankards of beer, plates of roast duck and pig, pies filled with cabbage and chestnut, and frosted spice cakes ten layers high. During dinner, Doria moved around the table, sitting next to each man in turn, to see who amused her the most. At the end of the evening, the clear winner was Taylin, a smiling, golden-haired prankster, who even after midnight was eager to slip ice cubes down his neighbor's shirt, fold his napkin into the shape of a cat or swan, or tell tales about himself as a youth, when he dressed up in the housemaid's apron and bonnet to sneak out of his parents' house.  

Doria and Taylin were married as soon as they could stop laughing long enough to set the date. And while Doria was definitely happier than Lividia, she realized after two weeks that Taylin was hopeless as a future king. As she told her sister Lividia, "He has no interest in the affairs of the Kingdom, he just wants to make people laugh! And—swear you'll keep this a secret—he tells his stories so often that I already know every word of each one by heart, and he's started to believe that the made up ones are true!"

All this time, Claria was watching . . . and thinking.  “Being able to choose my own husband does seem much better than being forced to marry one of my marshmallow-brained cousins. But if a royal search party can't turn up any man more interesting than Corwin or Taylin, I'd much rather stay single for the rest of my life. But, oh dear, I can't refuse my father's order to look for a husband...."

Claria realized that her best chance for avoiding a trip to the altar was to invent an  impossible contest, that no suitor could win. She spent the next few days deep in thought, hardly talking to anyone--not that they noticed. Then it came to her: She would consent to marry only a man who could show her the entire world in one hour.

When the royal search party heard this, they threw up their hands in despair. “A man who can show you the world in a mere 60 minutes? “Such a man can’t be found!” one wailed. [Random advisor, give him any voice you like] The pointy nosed advisor said, "Impossible. Can't be done." But the King and Queen were determined to see every single one of their daughters married, and soon. They ordered the search party to post signs across all three corners of Monotonia, proclaiming that whoever could show Princess Claria the whole world in one hour might win her hand in marriage. 

Days went by. Then weeks. When it began to look like no man would ever answer the call, Claria breathed a sigh of relief—and began to plan how she'd spend her solo future—maybe visiting hospitals, or as ambassador to foreign kingdoms. The King and Queen were just about to order the royal advisors to take down the signs, when.... three men showed up at the palace gates. Each one claimed that in just one hour, he would show Princess Claria the whole world.  

Claria was surprised. And if you want to know the truth, she was a little curious. How could any of these men even think they could do the impossible? Well, she'd have no choice but to find out. One-hour meetings were set for each suitor, over the next three days. 

On the first day, a tall, stout man appeared, wearing an expensive coat of dark blue wool and a broad hat with drooping gold feathers. Claria had to peer under the hat's rim just to get a look at the stern face of Suitor Number One. He led Claria to his covered carriage, which was also navy blue, with gold trim. Once inside, the suitor pulled the curtains tight, and shouted something to his driver. The horses took off at a furious gallop. Soon the carriage was going so fast that Claria was pinned to the back of her seat and could feel her lunch bouncing around inside her stomach.

“Where are you taking us?” shouted Claria, trying to pull the curtains open. “I feel sick, and I want to stop!”

 “We’re almost halfway around the world, hang on!" shouted the suitor. "Just a few more minutes and we'll be home at your – or maybe I should say "our," castle, my dear Princess.” 

“But I can’t see a thing," Claria wailed. "We could be going in circles around the castle for all I know!”

"Well, what did you expect," the suitor replied. “To go around the world, one must go so fast, everything is a dizzying blur. The curtains are closed to, uh, protect your sensitive eyes!”

Claria wanted no more of this madness. She shouted a royal order to the driver to return to the palace. But when they arrived, Suitor Number One demanded Claria’s hand in marriage! He insisted that they would have completed the journey if Claria hadn't given up. Just in time, a messenger arrived to say that someone's carriage wheels had just made ruts around the palace so deep that two goats and several chickens had fallen in. Suitor number one was tossed in the dungeon.

The next morning, Suitor Number Two arrived, dressed in a cream-colored silk coat that almost reached the floor, with matching gloves and high-heeled, buckled boots. He was a thin, pale man, with shoulders stooped forward so far that he looked like a walking letter "C."  In his arms, Suitor Number Two carried a large box, which he stroked nervously. He'd asked that the meeting be held in a large round turret room. When they reached the room, he carefully removed from the box a series of tubes, each one larger than the last. Inside some of the tubes were fitted mirrors and pieces of glass. The suitor took almost his whole hour assembling these, muttering to himself the whole time. Finally, with seven minutes remaining, he'd put together an impressively large telescope.

“Now, I’ll just get this focused, and then show you the world!”  he said. “Let’s see, up there I can see the moon rising, and there’s the lake outside the palace, and there’s -- hmm, could that be your lady-in-waiting flirting with your cousin, who looks a lot like your sister? Ooh, he touched her arm.” 

“Sir, your hour is almost up,” warned a royal advisor.

Finally, when the suitor let Claria get a look through the telescope, she spent the two minutes that were left squinting at a fuzzy view of Monotonia's potato fields. Claria was not sorry to see Suitor Number Two disappear into the dungeon. She did, however, ask the King and Queen to please let her use his telescope. 

As the third day dawned, Claria didn't even want to get out of bed, but she gave herself a pep talk. “My plan is still going pretty well, and at least I don’t have to sit through this with one hundred men.” It wasn't long before suitor Number Three came in, and introduced himself as Turrent. He was a bright-eyed man, with windblown red cheeks, a long stride and broad shoulders. He wore a close-fitting green traveling jacket, well-worn leather breeches, and comfortable walking boots.

Turrent wasted no time in asking Claria to sit down at a large table, where he spread out a huge sheet of white paper. Then he set down a pen and a bottle of ink. The royal hourglass was turned over to begin. “To show you the world,” he told Claria, as he looked right into her blue-green eyes, “we must begin at the top.” And, dipping his pen, Turrent swiftly drew a map of the far northern countries and seas, naming them one by one. “This is the Arctic Circle, which I’ve visited by boat and dog sled” he said.  “It’s full of crystal white icebergs, in a bright blue Ocean where seals and whales swim and play.” And so saying, he quickly sketched these for Claria. "And here's where I rode a block of ice around the shore with a baby walrus, until we found its mother," he continued.

Seeing that Claria was watching closely, Turrent continued telling stories as he moved south, continent by continent, sea by sea, all the while quickly drawing maps and pictures of people, places, and animals.

It seemed there was no place Turrent hadn’t been, and nothing he couldn’t draw. He told Claria tales of South American jungles where the trees were so thick that underneath you thought daytime was night and the vines grew so fast you had to chop your way through before they curled like snakes around your neck. He told of African deserts so hot that your eyes fooled you into seeing shimmering lakes of water, where he'd been saved from thirst by a blind man riding a camel. And he described snow-topped Himalayan mountains that stretched up and up, so close to the sky that some believed you could meet divine beings there-- though Turrent had met only hermits and the occassional food-stealing monkey. As the last grain of sand slipped through the royal hourglass, and Turrent was just finishing up by sketching the wings on a penguin at the South Pole, Claria cried “But I want to hear more!”

“That’s it, my hour's up and that’s the whole world,” said Turrent with a smile. “But if you will consent to share your life with me I'll have plenty of time to tell you all about the fascinating people and animals I came across.” 

You probably won't be surprised to hear that Claria chose to marry Turrent. Every morning when they awoke, Turrent had another adventure-filled story and more pictures for Claria, and every evening he gave her lessons in drawing. When Turrent had finally told Claria of all his adventures, they set out together on their own travels. Claria saw redwood trees in North America so big that even when she and Turrent held hands and threw their arms around them they couldn’t reach halfway, golden palaces in Asia that hung from the sides of cliffs, and turtle-covered Pacific Islands that stuck out of the sea like mushrooms. 

Years later after the old King and Queen had died, Claria and Turrent took their places. And so the happy couple finally returned from their travels, settled in the royal palace as the new King and Queen, and got ready to rid Monotonia of boredom forever.

The End