Hi, I understand that $subject is a known source of confusion for people when working with HQL/criteria queries and not applying something like DistinctRootEntityResultTransformer. I am seeing the same behaviour though when getting a root entity by id and join-fetching two (nested) collections. That's my model: @Entity public class Parent { @Id @GeneratedValue private Long id; @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch=FetchType.EAGER) @JoinColumn(name = "parent_id") private List<Child> children = new ArrayList<>(); } @Entity public class Child { @Id @GeneratedValue private Long id; @ElementCollection(fetch=FetchType.EAGER) @JoinTable(name = "Child_Properties") @MapKeyColumn(name = "key") @Column(name = "value") private Map<String, String> properties = new HashMap<>(); } I am persisting a parent with one Child which has three "properties" entries. Loading the Parent by id yields three elements in the "children" list: Parent loaded = session.get( Parent.class, 123 ); assert 1 == loaded.getConfigurations().size(); // <!-- Fails, it contains the same Child three times I don't think that's expected? I can file an issue, but first wanted to make sure I am not missing anything obvious. Thanks, --Gunnar