A duckling.

Have you noticed, Your Majesty... how the imperial duckling resembles his father?

Oh, perversity still holds it attractions, but not with that kind of ugly duckling.

After years of being regarded as a European ugly duckling, Ukraine had recently emerged as an important actor in the political process.

Education for indigenous peoples would seem to be the ugly duckling of national education programmes and in general to be assigned low priority and inadequate budgets at the national level.