Tip in The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L Frank Baum

Spoiler Alert!

And it's a doozy. Imagine that you're a young kid, just trying to find your footing in life. Your world is still black and white, right and wrong, and that's how your young mind learns to categorize things and distinguish one thing from another. Like, say, boys from girls.

And then you enter Oz and follow the adventures of Tip, a boy escaping from the witch who has enslaved him since he was a baby. Tip and Jack Pumpkinhead and the Saw-Horse go off on adventures and la la and so forth, and Baum gets to engage in some high-larious sexist comedy about lady soldiers, and it's an Oz-ing good time.

Then you get to the end and find out that Tip is, in fact, Ozma, the lost princess of Oz, magicked into boyness to hide her from some nefarious something or other, I can't remember.

I can't remember because I was shaken to the core by this boy I've known for however many pages suddenly being a girl I've never met before. I'M a girl. I'm not suddenly going to be told I have to be a boy, am I? And everyone won't act like that's the most normal bit of "hey, we forgot to tell you..." they'd ever heard, will they? They won't just sit down to their palace feast while I sit there with my sudden new reproductive organs rustling around under there, will they?

No one seemed to mind that Tip had to be Ozma all of a sudden, but I sure as hell did. Baum, what the hell's the matter with you? At least let him/her be a bit conflicted or go on Maury or something to complain about how I Was a Witch's Transgendered Slave.

But Tip wasn't transgendered. He never thought he was a girl and never wanted to be one. He just had to be.

Maybe I just didn't like being the thought of girlhood being the consolation prize that Duty To Your Country stuck you with.