They were polite, but quite unconstrained; and the obsequious people by whom she had always been surrounded had never displayed that engaging quality, save when, like the baroness, they were safely asleep in her presence.
But her account of her glories did not have the effect on her new friends she looked for.

As she exposed more and more of the trammeling net of etiquette in which from her rising to her going to bed she was enmeshed, their faces did not fill with the envy she would have found so natural on them; they grew gloomy.
At the end of the interrogation Erebus heaved a great sigh, and said with heart-felt conviction: "Well, thank goodness, I'm not a princess! It must be perfectly awful!" "It must be nearly as bad to be a prince," said the Terror in the gloomy tone of one who has lost a dear illusion.
The princess could not believe her ears; she stared at the Twins with parted lips and amazed incredulous eyes.

Their words had given her the shock of her short lifetime.

As far as memory carried her back, she had been assured, frequently and solemnly, that to be a princess, a German princess, a Hohenzollern princess, was the most glorious and delightful lot a female human being could enjoy, only a little less glorious and delightful than the lot of a German prince.
"B-b-but it's sp-p-plendid to be a princess! Everybody says so!" she stammered.
"They were humbugging you.

You've just made it quite clear that it's horrid in every kind of way.