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In some versions, the Very Important Man and I fall in love. When that happens, the resolution is simple. The truth comes out, and we get married in a grand ceremony. A magnificent celebration with cake for all.

I have to say, I’ve got some questions about that. I wonder about those fictional kings who, their story assures us, had no idea whatsoever that I was in disguise until the final moment. Is it still a happy ending when the handsome man they fell in love with turned out not to be a man after all? Was every last one of them supposed to be delighted? “Oh, you’re a girl? How, um, marvelous. No, no, I close my eyes when we kiss now because I’m so overwhelmed by emotion.”

There is another way the story can go, however. Sometimes, it isn’t a prince who falls in love with me.

Sometimes, it’s a princess instead.

And then, what’s a girl in disguise to do when she’s granted the traditional prize for her deeds of renown? When a king offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to the heroine, it must be accepted, or else the deception would be revealed to the world. So let the wedding bells ring.

In many stories, neither the heroine nor her wife are very happy about this on the night that follows. Although there are also a few tales—you can count them on one hand, but they do exist—where both women seem, well…Seriously Into It.

But either way, there’s an unexpected turn of events that occurs. An unavoidable final twist, whether it happens before the wedding night or after.

It’s time that I finished telling you “The Tale of Ilyana the Golden.” As far as I recall, when I left off, the emperor was busy being an asshole to me. Or rather, according to the story:

Once upon a time, an emperor was busy being an asshole to an unnamed princess disguised as a man.

The emperor had summoned her to his presence. “Bring me Ilyana the Golden,” he thundered, “or I will remove your head from your body, and not in the good way!”

The princess went to consult with her magical horse Sunlight. “My magic tells me that a genius has carried off Ilyana,” the horse attested. “He wishes to wed her, but Ilyana has vowed to marry only the suitor who can fetch her the glass of blessed water watched over by the Sleepless Guardian.”

“The what? Why does she want a glass of blessed water? Is she thirsty? And why would a glass of water need to be watched over by a Sleepless Guardian?”

“Don’t waste your time on irrelevant worldbuilding questions,” Sunlight chided her. “The genius, while he schemes of a way to steal the blessed water, is keeping Ilyana prisoner in his castle in the swamp across the sea. You must ask the emperor for a ship.”

The princess did as her horse suggested. “With a good ship and a stalwart crew,” she asserted, “I’m sure I can bring Ilyana the Golden back to you in no time. Er, somehow. To be honest, I haven’t entirely figured out the details yet.”

The impatient emperor immediately agreed. “You shall have a ship. You shall have all that you wish, if you bring me Ilyana.”

Sunlight and the princess sailed to the swamp and found the genius’s lair. And just as Sunlight had said, imprisoned in the castle was Ilyana the Golden, the most beautiful woman in the world. Fortunately, the genius himself was out trying to locate the glass of water.

The princess freed Ilyana and set sail back to the emperor. Just as they made landfall, however, the genius’s mother came in pursuit, springing from wave to wave across the sea. The princess and Ilyana leapt onto Sunlight’s saddle and raced away. The genius’s mother was close behind them, belching flames from her mouth.

“Take the ring off Ilyana’s finger and throw it behind you!” Sunlight shouted.

The disguised heroine did as her horse bid, and a great tower of stone sprang up where the ring landed. The genius’s mother leapt upon it, but it collapsed under her, sending her falling to her death. The tower vanished, and the ring reappeared on the disguised princess’s finger.

The princess brought Ilyana to the emperor, who fell in love with her at first sight. Ilyana was not entirely pleased by this. She wondered why she always wound up in the clutches of people she despised. And this time the man was three times her age, which made the whole thing seem pretty gross.

Soon, the emperor asked for her hand in marriage. By then, however, she’d fallen in love with someone else—the hero who had rescued her from the genius’s castle.

“I’m very honored by your offer, great emperor,” Ilyana dissembled. “But of course, I cannot marry until I have been given the glass of blessed water watched over by the Sleepless Guardian.”

The emperor commanded the disguised princess to fetch the water, on pain of death should she fail. By this time, the princess was rather tired of being sent out on dangerous quests. “Why does being his favorite,” she moaned to her horse, “mean that I get stuck with all the shit jobs?”

Sunlight, being a wizard horse, knew exactly where to find the blessed water. They traveled for many miles and fortuitously arrived on such a dull, uneventful day that the Sleepless Guardian had fallen asleep. The princess tiptoed past him, retrieved the glass, and raced away on Sunlight’s back.

The hoofbeats awoke the Sleepless Guardian. “A curse upon you!” he howled at the fleeing thief. “The curse of…an enormous penis! Your virile, manly body will grow a penis ten full inches longer than whatever you’ve got there now.” Ha! That’ll show him, the Sleepless Guardian thought. Good luck getting any use out of that thing.

By the time the princess returned to the emperor’s court, the curse had taken hold. The princess became the man he’d pretended to be.

There’s a bit more, but basically, there you have it. The ending that comes whenever the story puts two women in the starring roles. Whether they love each other or hate each other, whether they’ve only just met or have been living together as a couple for years, the same thing happens to every single one of the girls in disguise.

She turns into a boy.

There’s no other outcome. No other choice.

A couple of stories have me intentionally seeking it out. One of my more practical-minded alter egos found a witch and forked over a wad of cash for an appropriate spell. Another chose to enact a complicated ritual involving the heart of a duck stolen off a sleeping outlaw’s head. (What did the duck have to do with it? I have no idea.) And good for those imaginary Juleses. I’m happy they ended up with the bodies that matched their selves.