What Spears has had to endure over the past 13 years is beyond what most of us can comprehend. I’m not going to try and put myself in her brain, but it’s probably safe to say, at points, she probably thought she was going to be trapped in this situation forever. So if turning to fairytales and shiny-happy-thinking was going to help get her through the day as a coping mechanism, then who are we to tell her otherwise?

If her decision to start “reading more fairy tales” rings alarm bells with you, because you interpret it as her living in some kind of fantasy land, rest assured that fairytales have been found to have multiple benefits for emotional wellbeing.

In a 2016 paper from the University of Hawaii, writer Leilani VisikoKnox-Johnson comments on the positive impacts of fairytales for children, saying, “Fairy tales are an important part of a child’s development, especially in terms of their consciousness and moral development.

#FreeBritney: Britney Spears reveals how she has coped living under the conservatorship