Princess Connie knew that if she didn’t act immediately, the prince from the distant kingdom would fall for a princess in a neighbouring kingdom, and that could spell disaster for her and her eleven brothers. So she threw on her finest robes, had a servant saddle her horse, and rode off ready to capture her prince.
But the neighbouring princess had similar ideas and was also on her carpet prancing about trying to impress the prince, and the prince’s father, who was the king, stepped in and announced that the prince wasn’t really a prince at all but was the illegitimate son of a widow that he had once taken pity on. With that, the neighbouring princess said enough is enough and went back home, because she had no desire to marry a commoner. And then the widow appeared and said that the father of her son was in fact the king of another distant kingdom which was very famous. So the neighbouring princess missed out, and Princess Connie said “Ha! Ha! Ha! Now the real prince is all mine.”
But the prince had already fallen in love with the daughter of the local bread maker, and she had been adopted, as it turned out, and was a princess of a very very VERY wealthy kingdom. So they got married, and had a lot of children, and now there are princes and princesses everywhere, and they’re having a hell of a difficult time trying to marry them all off.
And Princess Connie is just an old spinster, because not even one of the superfluous princes wants to marry someone so old, and the other princess (the one on the carpet) is also a disgruntled old maid.