Romantasy.
If you spend any time on the bookish side of TikTok or Instagram, you’ve heard the buzz. Romantasy comes dressed to impress—sprayed edges in jewel tones, dramatic fan art of winged men and dagger-wielding women. The genre’s most popular books are discussed with the kind of half-guilty, half-earnest devotion usually reserved for very good desserts (peach cobbler with browned butter crumble) or very bad decisions (kissing morally gray men in real life).
For a lot of the world, though—especially readers who still aren’t totally sure what the difference is between fantasy and science fiction, or who quietly suspect the bliss found in romance novels is a farce—“romantasy” can feel like yet another confusing genre label.
And it can be, sure. It’s primarily a marketing term that surged in popularity thanks to BookTok. That’s not an insult. “Romantasy” helps readers find what they’re looking for. It helps booksellers shelve things. It helps authors define the stories they’re trying to tell. Three cheers for labels! Even if the brooding, heavily armed men inside these books would prefer to keep things undefined and mysterious.
Some people bristle at the term. They call it redundant, gimmicky, or a passing trend. And yes, it’s largely marketing. But marketing only works when it names something real.
So now that we’ve named it, let’s take a closer look at what’s actually inside.
The Expectations of a Mashed Genre
Romantasy = romance + fantasy.
But not in a casual, accidental way. Not a fantasy novel where the two main characters hook up because they’re forced to share a bedroll for warmth. Not a contemporary romance where someone happens to be a small-town witch but mostly runs a bakery, using her powers to guarantee the perfect rise on her raisin bread.
Romantasy occupies a very specific niche, and sometimes understanding what it isn’t helps clarify what it is.
What Romantasy Isn’t
It’s not simply “fantasy with a love interest.” Plenty of epic fantasies include marriages, affairs, and slow-burn attractions. To use a popular epic fantasy, George R. R. Martin uses love, sex, romance in A Song of Ice and Fire to drive tension and add depth, but the political machinery would keep grinding on regardless. If you could lift the romance out and the story would function essentially the same, you’re not in romantasy territory.
It’s also not “romance in costume.” A sweeping, vaguely historical setting doesn’t automatically make something fantasy. While some may argue with this take, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander could serve as an example of this. The story can’t happen without time travel, and yet its primary structure is romance grounded in a version of our own history. For most, it’s a romance novel rather than a fantasy, and I don’t think many would define it as a romantasy.
Two Genres Entwined
Romantasy is a full, unapologetic mashing of both genres at their structural cores. And with those two genres come two sets of expectations.
From romance, romantasy inherits promises. Chief among them: a guaranteed romantic resolution. Whether it’s a lifelong commitment or a hard-won for now, a happily ever after (or at least happily for now) isn’t optional—it’s foundational. The story assures you that whatever betrayals, battles, or misunderstandings arise, the couple will end the book together. That assurance is part of the emotional contract.
From fantasy, romantasy inherits scale. It gives us sprawling maps, layered magic systems, invented histories, and existential stakes. The question isn’t just “Will they confess their feelings?” It’s
“Will the kingdom fall?”
“Will the curse break?”
“What happens if the gods return?”
Take two of the most popular examples of the genre. Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) and Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing. In ACOTAR, the political alliances, immortal courts, and magical bargains are not decorative—they’re foundational. But so is Feyre’s love story with Tamlin. Remove the relationship, and the emotional engine collapses. Strip away the fae courts and curses, and the entire premise dissolves. Or consider Fourth Wing: The dragon riders, war college, and deadly trials matter deeply—but so does the central romance. Each element feeds the other. Neither survives intact alone.
The key is that romantasy carries structural expectations from both parents. The world-building must hold. The relationship arc must satisfy. If either side is flimsy, readers will notice. Romance readers will feel emotional shallowness. Fantasy readers will spot plot holes the size of dragon wings.
“Romantasy says: Yes, both. You don’t have to choose between magic and kissing.”
Romantasy says: Yes, both. You don’t have to choose between magic and kissing. For readers who have wandered between sections—too much politics here, not enough action there; too much yearning here, not enough dragons there—it’s a great joy to find a shelf to pull from.
Two Outcasts Coming Together
There’s also something quietly defiant about claiming a word that sounds soft—about watching two genres that have so often been sniffed at find undeniable, runaway success in the market. Romance has long been dismissed as frivolous. Fantasy has often been sidelined as escapist. Combine the two, and you risk doubling the condescension.
Romantasy leans in.
It says: We can have dragons and desire. We can have explicit yearning and intricate magic systems. We can build entire cosmologies and still center emotional intimacy. We can take love seriously in worlds that aren’t real—and in doing so, perhaps learn to take it more seriously in our own.
And we can do it well.
So . . . Is It New?
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: It depends what you mean by new.
Stories that center magic and desire are as old as storytelling itself. Folklore, such as the Chinese legend of Madam White Snake, is full of enchanted lovers and perilous bargains. Ballads like the Scottish Tamlin tell of partners who rescue their loves from otherworldly courts. Myths such as Persephone and Hades revolve around longing, betrayal, jealousy, devotion.
But love in these tales is often destabilizing. It’s dangerous. It’s transformative in ways that don’t necessarily prioritize mutual happiness—especially for women. Marriage can be a transaction. Desire can be a trap. Union may restore cosmic order, but not always personal joy.
As literature evolved, we saw these strands continue.
Gothic novels (such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë or The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde) gave us crumbling estates, brooding men, and heroines navigating shadowed corridors heavy with secrets. The magic wasn’t always explicit, but the atmosphere was otherworldly. Questions of female autonomy and repression were embedded in eerie settings.
Later came paranormal romance and urban fantasy—vampires, witches, angels, werewolves. Books like The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris or Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs brought supernatural beings into contemporary cities and let them fall in love under streetlights. These books leaned more clearly into centering the romantic relationship alongside the fantastical.
Young adult fantasy deepened that fusion for a new generation of readers. Series like Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins made romantic tension inseparable from supernatural or dystopian stakes. These stories insisted that teenage desire was not trivial—it was epic, world-shaping, worthy of prophecy and sacrifice. I’d argue that YA, in particular, was the forerunner to romantasy, and trained a generation of readers to expect both the kiss and the cataclysm.
But there were others. Long before “romantasy” became a label, adult fantasy writers were already exploring lush intersections of power and intimacy. Books like The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, and Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. These books don’t necessarily promise a genre-codified happily ever after as the contemporary romantasy expects, but they clearly understood that emotional intimacy could carry as much narrative weight as war or prophecy.
So no—stories and books that combine magic and love are by no means new. Not in the broadest mythic sense, nor in the specifics of modern publishing. Romantasy didn’t invent the marriage of magic and desire. It named it, sharpened it, and built a shelf sturdy enough to hold it.
Why Now?
Whenever a new(ish) genre surges, someone inevitably asks, “Why now?” And with a shrug, I suppose I’d respond, “Why not now?”
That said, I can think of a few compelling reasons for this particular explosion of popularity at this particular time.
A Readership Outgrowing Young Adult
As I mentioned before, I believe young adult was the forerunner to romantasy. Many of us fell in love with fantasy through YA. We loved the longing, the rebellion, the girls with daggers in their boots and secrets in their hearts. But eventually, some readers hit their late twenties, thirties, forties, and got tired of reading about teenagers navigating first kisses while simultaneously overthrowing governments.
(Which is not to say there’s anything lesser about YA or children’s literature as a whole. My MFA is in writing for children, and I wrote YA for a decade before switching over to the adult space. Kidlit authors tackle profound themes with clarity and courage.)
But reading tastes evolve. Life experience shifts what resonates.
Romantasy offers adult readers adult protagonists, grappling with adult questions that only time and experience can bring up. Not just “Who am I?” but “How do I heal, and how do I love, after everything I’ve survived?”
Women Taking Up Space
There’s been a noticeable shift toward centering the female gaze—not just in books, but across media. Social platforms have given individual creators the ability to build audiences without waiting for institutional approval. Readers talk directly to one another. They recommend what they love, loudly and publicly.
And what many women (and nonbinary readers, and clever men) have been saying is this: We want stories that center women’s stories, not just women’s suffering. Not just women as moral anchors or tragic backstories. Women’s desire. Pleasure. Agency.
Romantasy allows heroines to inhabit worlds of immense power—magical, political, physical—and to experience romantic and sexual awakening as something that strengthens rather than diminishes them.
The dragon may burn the village. The kingdom may teeter on the brink of war. But the heroine is not punished for riding the dragon, or her lover.
Seeking Joy
Let’s not pretend the current moment is uncomplicated. The news cycle is relentless. Global crises are constant. Many people feel stretched thin, anxious, uncertain. In response, some readers seek gritty realism. Others seek escape, relief.
“In a world where so much feels unstable, the certainty of a happy ending can feel radical.”
Romantasy provides tension and reassurance in equal measure. Yes, there are wars and betrayals and trauma. But the genre promise, borrowed from romance, is that love will endure. In a world where so much feels unstable, the certainty of a happy ending can feel radical.
Where the Genre Is Going
Is romantasy a trend? Yeah, sure. Publishing cycles are real. Certain aesthetics surge and fade. But the core impulse—to imagine impossible worlds and then explore love inside them—is durable. It’s ancient. It’s human.
Romantasy has so, so much room to grow. And this is where I hope it’s headed.
More Inclusivity
Right now, much mainstream romantasy centers white, cisgender, often heterosexual and able-bodied heroines in vaguely medieval European-inspired settings. Many authors (me included) share most or all of those identities with their protagonists.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with telling those stories. But only centering those stories? There is something wrong there. After all, they are not the only stories worth telling. Not only is homogeny boring, it’s also a shitty reflection of the world we live in. And romantasy should be more, not less, than our reality.
So what do I want? More.
I want to see more BIPOC protagonists by BIPOC creators. More queer love stories front and center. More disabled characters whose bodies are not magically “fixed” but fully integrated into the narrative as they are. I want more inclusive worlds inspired by a broader range of cultures and mythologies.
More Types of Stories
I hope for broader range. Broader tones. Broader settings, love interests, and tropes.
Yes, give me the brooding winged warrior with a tragic backstory and a sword he definitely knows how to use. But also give me full-throated, irreverent humor like in That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming. And give me quieter, literary-leaning romantasy that experiments with voice and structure, such as The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow—where the hero isn’t a hulking warlord but, gloriously, a man of footnotes and theories. And give me quirky secondary worlds like The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen, with a hero who is very much not a shadow daddy. He is, instead, a glitter-snot baby dragon surrogate daddy, and frankly that is the energy we deserve.
If romantasy is going to claim space on the shelf, then I want it to be a wide, inclusive shelf.
TL;DR: Romantasy
At its core, romantasy is not new. It is not frivolous. And it’s not going anywhere. It grows out of one of humanity’s oldest impulses: to imagine a world beyond our own—full of magic and impossibility—and then ask what love looks like at the center of it.
- What does commitment mean when lifespans stretch centuries?
- What does consent look like when power imbalances are literal and magical?
- How does trauma shape someone who can wield fire?
- How does partnership function when one person is heir to a throne and the other is sworn to kill them?
Fantasy magnifies. Romance intensifies. Together, they create a laboratory for exploring identity, power, vulnerability, and joy.
And maybe that’s why the label matters. When we say “romantasy,” we’re not just naming a marketing category. We’re signaling a promise. There will be wonder here. There will be longing. There will be danger, and growth, and probably at least one scene where someone pins someone else against a wall in a castle corridor, holding a knife to their neck.
But there will also be a choice. In a time when so much feels chaotic and unmoored, there’s something deeply satisfying about stories where love is not incidental, not accidental, not tragic by default—but deliberate.
Jessi Cole Jackson’s debut novel, Ruinous Creatures, was published by Atria Books in March. Her perfect day involves fresh-cut flowers, cream-filled pastries, and stories of all sorts. After a dozen years making costumes for professional theatres all over the East Coast, she moved home to rural Michigan, where she now lives with her family.