The Little Prince looks at Hans Christian Andersen — and rumors that he was the illegitimate son of future king, Christian Frederik:
Andersen was born in 1805. At this time, Denmark was still an absolute monarchy. Society was rigidly stratified, and there was little social mobility. A few managed, by hard work or exceptional talent, to climb the social ladder. One such was Andersen’s friend, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. But a pauper boy stood little chance of escaping his class. As the heedless aristocratic children say in his story Kids’ Talk (given a sprightly new translation in the Franks’ The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen): “Those people whose names end with sen, they can never, ever become anything in the world!”
Those people whose names end with sen, they can never, ever become anything in the world! That sounds like a good reason to cross the Atlantic for America.