[Fixed]-In django, is there a way to directly annotate a query with a related object in single query?

Yes, it’s possible.

To get a queryset containing all Chapters which are the last in their Novels, simply do:

from django.db.models.expressions import F
from django.db.models.aggregates import Max

Chapters.objects.annotate(last_chapter_pk=Max('novel__chapter__pk')
    ).filter(pk=F('last_chapter_pk'))

Tested on Django 1.7.

Possible with Django 3.2+

Make use of django.db.models.functions.JSONObject (added in Django 3.2) to combine multiple fields (in this example, I’m fetching the latest object, however it is possible to fetch any arbitrary object provided that you can get LIMIT 1) to yield your object):

MainModel.objects.annotate(
    last_object=RelatedModel.objects.filter(mainmodel=OuterRef("pk"))
    .order_by("-date_created")
    .values(
        data=JSONObject(
            id="id", body="body", date_created="date_created"
        )
    )[:1]
)

Yes, using Subqueries, docs: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/models/expressions/#subquery-expressions

latest_chapters = Chapter.objects.filter(novel = OuterRef("pk"))\
    .order_by("chapter_order")

novels_with_chapter = Novel.objects.annotate(
    latest_chapter = Subquery(latest_chapters.values("chapter")[:1]))

Tested on Django 3.0

The subquery creates a select statement inside the select statement for the novels, then adds this as an annotation. This means you only hit the database once.

I also prefer this to Rune’s answer as it actually annotates a Novel object.

Hope this helps, anyone who came looking like much later like I did.