I Was Wrong About Romantasy

World Building Wednesdays: What Fourth Wing and BookTok’s favorite books taught me about power, pleasure, and imagining something better.

Admittedly, I resisted the romantasy buzz for as long as I could. When Fourth Wing blew up, all the rage on BookTok, I scoffed and thought, “I’ll never read that.” I hate to admit it, but I was definitely being a bit of a book snob.

It’s not because it was popular on BookTok, a lot of my favorite books over the years have come directly from book influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Looking back, I think it was the genre. This newly-defined idea of “romantasy” wasn’t sitting well with me, which is strange because I love fantasy and I love romance. So, what was the deal?

I think the public perception that these books were just smutty, unfortunately, got to me. I thought of myself as a higher-brow reader. (The smutty stuff was for fanfiction, not published books, thank you very much). But, I’m here to say: I was wrong.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with reading spicy books, and as someone who claims to be sex-positive, I should’ve checked my biases a lot sooner. Secondly, that’s not at all the be-all and end-all of these books! Which I also should have realized sooner. On average, the Empyrean books have 2-3 chapters that feature sex scenes and the other 50+ chapters are filled with all the other stuff that makes fantasy and romance books great: budding romantic relationships, political intrigue, magic and dragons, battles and fight scenes, interesting friendships, and so much more.

All of this to say, as a reformed romantasy-hater, I want to talk about why romantasy is actually the perfect genre to help us all imagine the future we want.

Art Credit: @sereneillustrations

Romantasy books provide blueprints for a successful overthrow of corrupt power.

In most fantasy stories, there is some type of battle between good and evil. Most times, we follow the rag-tag fellowship of adventurers or the chosen hero or the complicated anti-hero in a quest to bring down the Big Bad Evil.

The same is true of romantasy stories! Because we are following a protagonist in their quest to right the wrongs of their world, we get to see their numerous attempts to chip away at and overthrow that evil. This can take many different forms: finding companions for their journey, planning a heist to steal a magical item that will aid them, engaging the enemy in battle, and so on.

Whatever it is, we get to see numerous and varied attempts to take down corruption and though they are fictional, these plot points can actually be pretty great examples that we could apply to our real lives. There is no doubt corruption all over the place in the real-world, so it’s not hard to read these stories and put ourselves in the shoes of the main characters.

While we may not actually want to plan a heist or be able to ride a dragon into battle, we can nevertheless read about how these characters find companions, how they strategize, how they talk to the people on the opposing side, how they defend the weak and fight for what is right, and use all of that as blueprints for our own organizing and activism.

Romantasy books teach us how to be open and honest about desire and pleasure.

As I mentioned before, romantasy books do have a reputation for being spicy. While the genre is vast, and spice levels may vary from 0 to 100 depending on the book, the presence of desire and pleasure – especially from a female perspective – is no doubt a cornerstone of the genre.

At the heart of these books, in the middle of all the magic and fantastical world-building, is romance. And there is something addicting about romance when it is written well, in my opinion. I cannot get enough of slow-burn romance, longing gazes, first touches, and all the tropes that come with a romance.

While we live in a world that is still full of sex-shaming and misogyny, what is most refreshing about these stories is how the (often) female protagonist is so open about her desire for her love interest. Her desire is not shameful, it is alluring; her eventual pleasure is not something taboo, it is aspirational.

For the books in the genre that feature heterosexual relationships, especially the ones where the brooding male has a tough exterior but is actually completely obsessed with his love interest below the surface, the prioritizing of female pleasure can seem revolutionary.

Most of us have grown up in a society where male pleasure is the most important part of a romantic relationship (or, any relationship really) – thanks, patriarchy! It’s not as if these books ignore male pleasure, they just flip the script, and show us great examples of what it looks like for the female heroines to be honest about their desires and for their pleasure to be taken seriously by their partners, as a truly important facet of their romantic relationship.

Art Credit: @aokiart

Romantasy books give us so many examples of badass women.

Most of the time, the main characters in romantasy books are female. Again, this is refreshing because for so long the fantasy genre has been male-dominated – in authorship, in readership, and in characters.

Because the female characters in romantasy stories are protagonists, not simply relegated to one-dimensional side characters, we get to see so many examples of complex, flawed, and yet inspirational female characters for a change.

Because I’m currently obsessed with Fourth Wing, take Violet Sorrengail as an example: she is fierce but she also has a fragility to her (thanks to a chronic pain condition) and yet she is not at all a fragile character. She works hard on her physical strength while her mental fortitude and sense of justice is some of the strongest I’ve ever read. She fights for what is right but is also stubborn to a fault. She’s super intelligent and yet sooooometimes can miss very obvious emotional signals from her love interest, Xaden.

Compare this to characters like Arwen and Eowyn from the quintessential fantasy story Lord of the Rings. They are both great in their own ways – made better and slightly more complex by the movie adaptations – but we don’t get a complete picture of their personalities from their limited portrayal in the books.

If there’s one thing romantasy knows how to do right, it’s really badass female protagonists.

Romantasy books (pretty much) guarantee a happy ending.

While most fantasy stories probably end with some kind of happy ending, it’s not necessarily a guarantee. After years of fighting and bloodshed, the systems of corrupt power in Game of Thrones pretty much just got restored again in the end, for example. Not exactly…happy (or revolutionary).

What’s great about the romance blended into the fantasy genre is that you almost all but guarantee that the promised happily-ever-after of romance books is carried over. That’s not to say that everything in the story will go smoothly – people will still die in the fight for justice, homelands may still be destroyed, etc. – but in the end we will get to see the ways in which the fight was worth it and brought about that happily ever after.

In today’s day and age, and as we imagine the future we want for ourselves and future generations, it’s so helpful to have these stories give us blueprints on how to fight but also serve as a model for what happiness can look like in the end.

That happy future may involve rebuilding. It may involve reparations. It may not be easy… But it is possible and it is worth it.

That’s what romantasy tells us, anyways.