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I’ve mentioned “romantic fantasy” in a few recent posts, and some of the responses have made it apparent that a lot of folks have no idea what that actually means - they’re reading it as “romance novels in fantasy settings”, and while some romantic fantasy stories are that, there’s a bit more to it.
In a nutshell, romantic fantasy is a particular genre of Western fantasy literature that got started in the 1970s, reaching its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Its popularity sharply declined shortly thereafter, for reasons that are far too complicated to go into here; suffice it to say that you won’t find many pure examples of the type published after 1998 or so.
It’s tough to pin down exactly what romantic fantasy is in a few words, but you’ll definitely know it when you see it - there’s a very particular complex of tropes that defines it. I’ll try to hit the highlights below; not every romantic fantasy story will exhibit all of these traits, but most will exhibit most of them.
Romantic fantasy settings are typically “grown up” versions of settings that traditionally appeal to young girls: telepathic horses, wise queens, enchanted forests, all that stuff. Note that by “grown up”, I don’t mean “dark” or deconstructionist; romantic fantasy is usually on board with the optimistic tone of its source material, and any grime and uncertainty is the result of being a place that adult human beings actually live in. Protagonists are natives of the setting, rather than visitors from Earth (as is customary in similar stories targeted at younger audiences), though exceptions do exist.
In terms of stories and themes, romance is certainly a big presence, but an even stronger one is politics. Where traditional fantasy is deeply concerned with the geography of its settings, romantic fantasy focuses on the political landscape. Overwrought battle scenes are replaced by long and complicated discussions of political alliances and manoeuverings, brought down to the personal level through the use of heavily stylised supporting characters who function as avatars of the factions and philosophies they represent. Many romantic fantasy stories employ frequent “head-hopping” to give the reader insight into these philosophies, often to the point of narrating brief scenes from the villain’s perspective.
The “good” societies of romantic fantasy settings tend to be egalitarian or matriarchal. Patriarchal attitudes are exhibited only by evil men - or very occasionally by sympathetic male characters who are too young and sheltered to know better (and are about to learn!) - and often serve as cultural markers of the obligatory Evil Empire Over Yonder. Romantic fantasy’s heydey very slightly predates third-wave feminism, so expect to see a lot of the second wave’s unexamined gender essentialism in play; in particular, expect any evil or antagonistic woman to be framed as a traitor to her gender.
Usually these societies are explicitly gay-friendly. There’s often a special made-up word - always printed in italics - for same-gender relationships. If homophobia exists, it’s a trait that only evil people possess, and - like patriarchy - may function as a cultural marker of the Evil Empire. (Note, however, that most romantic fantasy authors were straight women, so the handling of this element tends to be… uneven at best.)
Magical abilities are very common. This may involve a unique talent for each individual, or a set of defined “spheres” of magic that practically everyone is aligned with. An adolescent lacking magical abilities is usually a metaphor for being a late bloomer; an adult lacking magical abilities is usually a metaphor for being physically disabled. (And yes, that last one can get very cringey at times, in all the ways you’d expect - it was the 1980s, after all.)
In keeping with their narrative focus, romantic fantasy stories almost always have an explicitly political character with a strongly progressive bent. However, most romantic fantasy settings share mainstream fantasy’s inexplicable boner for monarchies, so there’s often a fair bit of cognitive dissonance in play - many romantic fantasy settings go through elaborate gymnastics to explain why our hereditary nobility is okay even though everybody else’s is icky and bad. This explanation may literally boil down to “a wizard did it” (i.e., some magical force exists to prevent the good guys’ nobles from abusing their power).
I think that about covers it, though I’m sure I’ve overlooked something - anybody who knows the subject better than I do should feel free to yell at me about it.
(As an aside, if some of this is sounding awful familiar, yes - My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic draws a lot of inspiration from romantic fantasy, particularly the early 90s strand. It’s not a straight example of the type - there are very few of those around today - but it’s not at all subtle about its roots.)
Oh, I read so much of this as a teen and young adult. It might have started a touch earlier than the 70′s with Anne MacCaffrey and Dragonriders of Pern? The most obvious example I can think of is Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books and over in the comic book medium, I think Wendy Pini’s Elfquest just squeezes in.
One thing about this genre, when I reread something from it that I loved 20 or 25 years ago, I go from extreme and affectionate nostalgia to quite literally blushing in embarrassment over some of those cringe-worthy bits you mentioned.
Yeah, Lackey’s Valdemar books are basically the platonic ideal of romantic fantasy for a lot of folks - though in spite of being arguably the most influential romantic fantasy author of her generation, Lackey herself was a relative latecomer to the genre.
As for McCaffrey, I’d hesitate to classify her Dragonriders of Pern series as romantic fantasy. I’ll grant that later entries in the series certainly develop in that direction, but especially early on it hews a lot closer to traditional heroic fantasy. Her Talent universe, however, is a dead-perfect example of the type, in spite of having an extremely variant setting.
(For those who haven’t read them, McCaffrey’s Talent books take place in a gonzo far-future space opera setting, revolving around the personal dramas of a pseudo-noble caste of godlike telepaths who enjoy their privileges as a consequence of being the setting’s only economical source of faster-than-light communication and transport. Weird stuff.)
I read so much Mercedes Lacky and Anne McCaffrey as a kid. I’d love to hear about the decline of the genre - I’m guessing that modern feminism and the lgbt movement had a lot to do with it? That is - the growth out of a lot of the more cringey tropes morphing the genre into something distinctly different?
Yeah, there were a number of different factors involved. Losing the LGBT audience was certainly part of it - not because of the inept handling of the subject matter per se, but because a lot of LGBT readers were reading romantic fantasy simply because they couldn’t get that kind of representation anywhere else, and when more LGBT authors started getting published in the mid 1990s, they had better options.
The Internet itself was another big culprit. Commercial Internet service went mainstream circa 1995, and suddenly, a lot of content that had formerly been the province of a hard core of dedicated hobbyists was accessible to everyone - most critically, online fanfic. Many folks, particularly among younger readers, found that online fanfic scratched the same itch as romantic fantasy; I recall a great deal of mid-to-late-1990s fanfic that basically applied the tropes and forms of romantic fantasy to video game settings, for example. (Chrono Trigger was an oddly popular choice - anyone old enough to remember that?)
This was compounded by mishandling by both authors and publishers. Though the new communication channels afforded by the Internet could have been a great boon to them, most romantic fantasy authors (correctly) perceived online fanfic as competing for their audience, and responded with extreme hostility. We’ve talked a bit about Mercedes Lackey; her stance on online fanfic was legendarily draconian, and often backed with litigation, to the extent that her nascent Internet fandom was basically smothered in its crib. By the time she mellowed out on the medium, it was too late. A lot of other romantic fantasy authors and publishers followed the same trajectory.
Lastly, the final nail in romantic fantasy’s coffin was basically J K Rowling’s fault, believe it or not. During the period in which romantic fantasy literature enjoyed its peak popularity, YA fantasy literature was in a low ebb; there wasn’t much of it coming out, and most of it wasn’t very good, so a lot of kids were reading romantic fantasy (in spite of its subject matter often being wildly inappropriate; I’ve mentioned in the past how many books about teenage girls having sex with dragons I ended up reading!). That youth demographic ended up being the last bastion of romantic fantasy’s mainstream readership - then the YA fantasy renaissance of the late 1990s stole that audience wholesale.
There were probably half-a-dozen other significant factors that contributed to romantic fantasy’s commercial decline, but those are the highlights.
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