Written by Mark Twain

Published in 1870

This is a story about a girl who has been raised as a male in order to take the throne. A problem arises when the rightful heir to the throne (another female) falls in love with the future ruler. When the girl claims that the future ruler is her child's father, the future ruler is forced to make a decision between saving the girl's life and revealing her true sex.

Typically, a story would follow a plot driven by conflict, then find its conclusion in some sort of resolution to that conflict. In Twain's story, he simply gets to the climax of a difficult point in the plot, then allows readers to interpret their own solution. While some may view this as Twain giving up and abandoning a definite conclusion to the story, the open-endedness calls for the reader to take initiative and analyze the narrative and end it in a way that is most logical to the story.

It is debatable whether Twain began writing this story knowing that he would not write an ending, or whether he fully intended for it to have a definite ending. He writes as if he originally intended to provide a solution to the story, but we have no way of knowing if this is actually the case.

The full text can be found here: A Medieval Romance, excerpt from The Writings of Mark Twain