Some time ago someone told me this story...
Once upon a time, on an island somewhere, there was a handsome young prince who was on the lookout for a wife. Of course all the island mothers were scrambling to throw their eligible daughters in his way, in the hope of winning a happy ever after whose glory would in part rebound onto them, and also in the hope of winning a generous bride price as, in the traditions of this nation, brides were paid for by their grooms in the hairy, smelly, weighty currency of cows - one cow for an ordinary girl, two if you were a lass of great beauty or skill, four for a princess.
The prince in question showed little interest in the accomplished beauties who crowded around him whenever crowding was possible. Instead, at long last, he fixed upon a quiet, plain-ish girl he found tending her father's cows in a field. The people of the nation were horrified that their prince should settle on a lass so apparently short of any visible attractions. And when it was learnt that the prince had paid the unheard-of price of not four but eight cattle for this little nothing of a girl, many an Islander mama swooned and many more used the kind of bad language which would have earnt them a kicking-out of any decent household.
Quietly ignoring all this matronly drama, the prince took his simple, unobtrusive maiden back to his residence and they commenced married life. They started without any fuss and kept a low profile for quite some time, during which the furore over the outrageous bride-price settled down a little. Eventually they started to go about together in public - and bewildered, that public, held up its hands in awestruck horror - surely the beautiful, assured yet humble woman who appeared by the prince's side could not be the cow-tending maiden he had scooped up out of some random field somewhere?
But of course it was – because, you see, in bestowing upon the girl a price beyond any princess, the prince told the world and more importantly the girl herself of the great value that he saw in her; and, seeing this, the girl had found it in herself and come into her own.
When I first heard this story, I didn't think much of it and what I did think was bound up in outraged post-feminist ideals (I heard it first many years ago when I was nothing but outraged ideals of one kind or another). It is only recently that I have started to see the great truth which lies within this story - which is that love, that great transforming force, from the right person and to the right person, makes both parties to that love simultaneously the prince and the girl, each the seeker of a good which may not be apparent to the world at large and the one whose worth is at last discovered.