Velvet Chains and Faerie Lies: Why So Much Romantic Fantasy is Just Conservative Propaganda in a Lace Dress

Romantic fantasy is everywhere. I’m sure I’d encountered some over the years, but I hadn’t really thought about romantic fantasy as a genre separate from romance or even fantasy until the rise of TikTok put the likes of ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas) on my radar. Before that, my exposure to fantasy was largely in the high fantasy-Tolkien-Dragonlance-Drizzt arena. I was the stereotypical weird Dungeons and Dragons kind of nerd who also happened to read the bodice rippers my mom passed down to me secondhand.

Who am I kidding though?! I kind of still am.

The more I worked on my debut novel, though, the more I sought community online, and the more exposure I had to the romantic fantasy, or romantasy, genre. It reigns supreme on BookTok, a community of readers on TikTok that we are all familiar with by now.

But beneath the velvet and starlight lies a dark truth—a hot take for some to be sure—many of these stories aren’t just lazy… They’re toxic, and they’re feeding readers a steady diet of patriarchal propaganda dressed up in corsets and mating bonds, all with a backing track of overprotective male aggression.

I knew that in general I tended to dislike those books, but I hadn’t thought about exactly what rubs me the wrong way until two things happened.

1. I came across a YouTube video by Willow Talks Books breaking it down.
2. I happened to go viral on my personal TikTok talking about my D/s relationship, collaring, and the misappropriation of BDSM power dynamics and their symbols by conservative self-proclaimed #Tradwives.

So, um, buckle up buttercups.

This one might ruffle some feathers.

And of course, all of this criticism comes with the big disclaimer as an author that I’m absolutely not saying my own work is without fault or that I don’t write things at times that are bad, lazy, or tropey. I’m a big believer that we can critique others’ work while also acknowledging our faults and continuing to improve our own work.

Lazy Stories and Boring Worlds

Let’s start with my easiest nitpick of the romantasy genre: worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is the soul of fantasy. It should transport us, challenge us, immerse us. Yet in many romantic fantasy bestsellers, it barely exists. Instead, you’ll often find vague political unrest, inconsistent or superficial magic systems, and carbon-copy kingdoms.

Don’t even get me started on the A Court of Blank and Blank book titles and book covers.

It all makes it feel like window dressing, not the living, breathing world I’m hoping to escape into. The fantasy exists only to prop up the romance, and I really think that’s a missed opportunity.

While it’s not necessarily fair to compare romantasy worldbuilding to the likes of Tolkien’s epic fantasy worlds—honestly, I generally don’t think that intensive level of worldbuilding is really necessary in romance—I would compare it to the likes of R.A. Salvatore.

He is a solid worldbuilder known for his work building on the established worlds of the Forgotten Realms from Dungeons and Dragons, and I think he’s a great example of what I expect in romantasy. I’m not looking for Lord of the Rings or Dune level depth. Instead, I’m looking for something that builds on modern fantasy lore in a way that’s solid and believable, not a world that’s just there to frame the fae prince’s abs or, god forbid, his wingspan.

Superficial Emotional Experiences

Now outside of the world an author creates, one of my favorite aspects of a story is the emotional experience of the characters. I doubt I’m the minority here. The plot is what pulls us in, but the emotions of a character are what make us feel connected.

So, I find using first-person and multiple POV’s (like when each chapter is told from a different character’s perspective) is a sneaky tactic some authors use to avoid having to do the work of crafting a deeply emotional experience.

It’s not inherently bad.

But really the point of using first-person in these books is to help readers self-insert. They’re not connecting with the protagonist, and the author doesn’t have to do the extra work to create and nurture that connection. Instead, they are her.

Of course she’s also written just vaguely enough for the reader to slip into her skin. It’s a cop out, a shortcut.

More than that, it allows the author to skip the hard work of truly developing the character’s inner world because there isn’t one. It becomes, by default, the inner world of the reader. Meanwhile, the love interest becomes a flat stereotype of a character who functions more as a fantasy vending machine than anything else.

His POV exists to show you how much he wants you… I mean, her. Not that it’s a bad thing by any means, but it isn’t the only thing I want to know or feel or learn about him.

Yes, there are certainly some exceptions where this works well. A Song of Ice and Fire, the inspiration for the series Game of Thrones, is a fantasy series where this approach is used, and, like I said, I think it works. However, I would argue that it is because the political machinations across dozens of characters is less confusing for readers in this format, AND because George R.R. Martin isn’t skimping on the emotional experience when he does it.

When “You’re Mine” Is Their Only Personality Trait

There’s a type of male love interest that’s everywhere in romantic fantasy: He’s ancient and immortal. He’s dominant and possessive. He’s emotionally repressed and often violent.

Yet, he’s somehow “perfect” because he’s hot and broken.

These men are not just morally grey. I love me a morally grey man who would burn the world to the ground for her.

The difference comes in how those behaviors are expressed. Are they coming from a place of emotional intelligence? Or are they coming from a place of control? Dominance doesn’t mean the elimination of consent.

Consider Edward Cullen from the Twilight series. Edward routinely demonstrates a possessiveness and protectiveness for Bella that is honestly pretty amazing. We love a man who loves and protects what is his. However, how he expresses those traits turns something sexy into something alarming.

He doesn’t just save Bella from a group of skeezy bikers. He “rescues” her and then shames her for it. He believes his soul is tainted, that he is not good for her, so he robs her of all autonomy and abandons her. He then uses cruelty to hurt her rather than spending time and energy communicating, setting boundaries, or having any level of emotionally intelligent conversation about ending their relationship.

I want to see a man who humbles himself instead of lashing out, who respects the woman he professes to love instead of infantilizing her, who

Frankly, it’s infuriating that more romantasy authors don’t explore the depth that exists in the type of man who could merc an entire city to save her and at the same time be emotionally available and emotionally intelligent.

Instead, we get one-dimensional heroes who are just toxic, and their behavior is often framed as romantic rather than alarming. They threaten, manipulate, isolate, and control… all in the name of love. This isn’t edgy. It’s not aspirational. And it’s sure as hell not healthy.

Conservative Propaganda

Now, let’s talk heroines. Honestly, when I sat down to write this article, I thought I’d be labeling the section about the men conservative propaganda and this section something completely different.

But no.

Because while yes, a lot of the problems with the male lead characters stems from this conservative idealogy that’s weirdly present in fantasy—and yeah, I absolutely blame Tolkien and his Bechdel Test bullshit for this one considering he’s basically the father of modern fantasy as we know it—despite the women holding bloody swords and the spicy scenes where her pleasure actually kind of matters, most popular romantic fantasy is deeply conservative at its core.

Cue the sound of my soul groaning because this is especially true in books that heavily toe the line between young adult, or YA, and adult fiction.

In fact, I would hazard a guess that many books in the romantasy genre would be better suited for the YA genre, and a lot of their issues stem from that fact, but their authors really, really wanted their 19 year old heroine to get nasty with the hundred year old fairy prince.

And you just can’t do that in YA books.

So this is where we end up, in a genre that feels more like YA or fanfiction because it kind of was meant to be exactly that. Where too many female main characters follow “chosen one” archetypes with all the trappings of destiny but none of the complexity.

She’s “not like other girls,” somehow powerful without any training, and everyone either wants to marry her or murder her, but she rarely has agency. She’s not self-actualized at all, and even at the end of her character arc, she won’t be. Not really.

She’s reacting to plot and prophecy, not making meaningful choices of her own. She’s marketed as “strong,” but her strength is often performative in ways that mirror the gendered expectations of women in our own patriarchal society: self-sacrifice or martyrdom.

She has no flaws, no goals, no real friendships outside of the man she’s fated to be with. She’s a vessel.

And doesn’t that sound familiar?!

In too many romantasy books, the heroines are still defined by the men who love them.

Their love interests are dominant patriarchs, cloaked in brooding trauma. Gender roles are strictly enforced. Virginity is fetishized. The fantasy world mirrors real-world hierarchies—monarchies, sexism, heteronormativity—with zero critique.

They don’t exist to call out these hierarchies and ultimately challenge them. They embrace them. Even if the heroine pushes herself to the brink and saves the world from utter ruin, marriage, mating bonds, and babies become the end goal, whatever she may have wanted or not in the beginning.

These books love to wear the costume of feminism, but if you peel back the layers, it’s still the same old story: “You are powerful… once a man tells you that you are.”

I Don’t Hate Romantasy

This isn’t about hating romantic fantasy. Or romance. Or fantasy.

Despite its flaws and the things that drive me mad about the trends I’m seeing in this genre, I really love it. All of my life I’ve had to live in two very different worlds as a reader. I read my fantasy, knowing that if there is a relationship that builds, it will be the barest of sub plots. And I read my romance, knowing that I may get elements of fantasy but never to the degree I really want it.

I want to love this genre, so this critique is about asking for more from this genre.

We can have deep, immersive worldbuilding that challenges the status quo. Our beloved heroines can have flaws beyond clumsiness or naiveté. They can have goals and agency—they can be full formed people who grow through their own choices.

And their love interests can be complex and respectful, not a walking abuse charge in disguise. These men can have character arcs that center mutual growth and deconstructing toxic masculinity, not dominance and submission.

Let’s uplift authors who are doing this. As readers, let’s demand stories that are truly subversive, characters that are multi-dimensional, worlds that feel real…

And books that are actually well written. You know who I’m side-eyeing.

If you love these popular books, cool. Keep reading what brings you joy. But let’s stop pretending these stories are revolutionary. It’s okay if they’re not—not everything we read needs to be.

But let’s stop calling it feminism when it’s actually just patriarchy in a sexy dress. Let’s stop defending lazy writing just because the love interest has wings and a tragic past. Romantic fantasy can be radical. It can be fierce. It can be a genre where women aren’t just desirable—they’re sovereign. We deserve more than velvet chains and faerie lies.