Where Fantasy Touches Love: The Psyche in Romantasy

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Fantasy is often dismissed as escapism. Dragons, magic and impossible worlds were still a serious endeavour. But now, in the age of Romantasy, the frowned-upon presence of physicalities of love dominates bestseller lists. Part of the readership is enchanted, the other abhorred.

But I argue: Where fantasy and reality touch, there is learning. And nothing touches reality more closely than a fantastical story with deep emotional roots, or in other words: Rooted in love.

If you have ever read anything by me before, you will know that I love to mix psychology with culture and in this case, literature. I believe ANY simple fantasy book can usher in learnings, but romantasy books might be uniquely able to reflect ones psychology, across obvious personalities and blind spots.

I argue that Romantasy is more than smut and especially our initial distaste with it shows that it hides potentially painful learnings about patriarchy (read Part 1 of my Romantasy series here) and ourselves, in three layers that I will explore now: The self, relationships and our social context.

Why Fantasy Feels Personal: Narrative Identity & Shadows

Look, I love Game of Thrones, but I will say that all the prostitution in those books was a bit much for a woman to even want to relate to. The Middle Ages were dark and gruesome, maybe, but since the white walkers were a choice, so was every openly written sexual assault throughout the series.

But it was celebrated nonetheless; sex sells.

In fact, many female characters like Sansa have their biggest “character developments” triggered by being raped, which, for me as a female reader, frankly destroyed the thin veil of agency that the books try to impose through labelling her “a strong female character”. I mean, what is the lesson for women there? Get raped and get strong? Sounds like a page from another popular file.

And this is precisely where romantasy jumps in, by portraying not just strong women, but ones with facets, personalities and depth. I personally love that I can find myself mirrored in a main character so as to derive learnings from them, while not immediately running to the salon to change my entire appearance to their likeness.

And that is something that romantasy continues to do, despite it being criticised so heavily, many derive value far beyond pleasure from it. Here is an example:

I fell in love with the story of Nesta in ACOTAR. I deeply sympathise with her character, but especially with her struggles. She has major self-destructive tendencies, bordering on self-hurt and likes to hide herself from the world and its issues. But once she gets out of her hole, she is there, shining for others and yet questioning herself.

The internal conflict of Nesta taught me things for my life that were packaged in a nice narrative, a gripping story, and though I will never end up on a mountain battling winged-muscled men for my life, it is the thoughts in between the action that sink in for me.

This sort of psychological resemblance could be labelled “narrative identity”, which is a term coined by Dan McAdams, and it describes the act of humans integrating reality into narrative arcs, which then end up resembling story arcs. This idea is utilised in “narrative therapy”, which works to disentangle the human from narratives that don’t serve them, while strengthening their agency.

In my case, Nesta’s storyline in A Court of Silver Flames is like a parallel narrative string to how I view my own story of more subtle defiance. How she reacts gives me the opportunity to check for possible outcomes and mirror them into reality to adapt my actions. This process is called “emotional simulation”, and we will get back to this concept later.

Another thing it allows me to do is to identify what I react strongly to inside the story, which might be part of my “psychoanalytical shadow” (read more about the shadow here). Here is an example:

In Fourth Wing, I don’t really empathise with how small and fragile Violet is described. Actually, it irritated me until I learned that this was Rebecca Yarros’ way to display her struggle with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), which many others besides me could relate to.

I read it, it didn’t fit my personal narrative, but I am able to set this aside because it might ring a bell for another woman. What I can empathise with is her proneness to injury more generally, and the feeling of being up against a whole quadrant of inhumanly strong people.

While in Violet’s life, it is mostly about sparing on a mat, in my life, I am faced with more metaphorical strength and a familiar society that wants me to be one thing, when I “fight” to be another. Like Violet, though different, I see myself between the scribes and the riders.

The fact that I relate so deeply on the one side and get irritated immediately on the other, tells me where my shadow lies: I cannot accept that a person is small, while I can relate to her. I want the character I care about to be strong inside out, more like Nesta, which is a perfect compass for where I need to work on myself: Allowing smallness, cuteness, softness.

And I am delighted when Rebecca Yarros doesn’t just write a simple narrative along the lines of:

“Violet trained and trained and one day she woke up strong and kicked all their asses”.

No.

Violet needs to be clever about it, poison her opponents, and constantly walk the line between cheating and winning. She shows empathy, endangers herself on the parapet, but wins a friend for life in the process.

My favourite scene of silent empowerment is when Violet can’t hold herself in the saddle of her dragon. She falls off, again and again, tries her best, but she is too small for this infamously strong dragon. And that is realistic, much more so than if she were to suddenly have an “aha” moment and become the best rider in the quadrant.

Instead, she is the first to create a saddle with straps that hold her in place. This adds a new level of dynamics to the story for Yarros to write about, because it suddenly becomes a choice for Violet to cut her straps and endanger her life to save others. And it teaches me another thing: That if one uses accommodations that is not “giving in”, but it is equity. It teaches me that “needing help is ok” and that “strong female character” is a simple word with many meanings beyond physical strength.

The Characters We Love: Not-so-lonely Men & Tropes

At the same time, these accommodations for Violet give Xaden (the male lead) a chance to step in and help in a way that doesn’t belittle, but enables the female main character. He orders the saddle for Violet, but doesn’t tell her where to go.

These relationships are lovable, integratable into my life, and honestly reflective of our society currently battling with what we actually want a man to be.

To clarify: What women mean when they joke about “romantasy being a guidebook for the modern man” is the scenes where the male lead makes the female lead breakfast, where he puts ointment and plasters on her injured knee, or the small grins that spark on his face when she kicks someone in the balls, verbally or physically.

The pride that these male characters feel when looking at their partner’s shine is what we would like to see in a partner, not the wings.

It baffles me how some men cannot seem to draw that line between the fantastical parts of fantasy and the realistic parts of the story. I mean, I will not lie, the sex they have in those books is not bad; yet one should have learned that those scenes are where we cross the line from reality into fiction.

These “relationship-portrayals” that women so love to read and men love to hate go far beyond just information for men. The type of “trope” a woman prefers might actually be another hint at underlying psychodynamics that are worth exploring:

Enemies to Lovers plot-fans might be people intrigued by shadow integration — the psychological idea, described by Carl Jung, that we are drawn to traits we suppress or disown in ourselves. At their emotional core, these types of stories explore transformation through confrontation, which might also hint at a preferred way of communication.

The Friends to Lovers trope could resonate with people who value emotional safety and trust as the foundation of intimacy. The fantasy here is not a dramatic transformation, but recognition: Someone who already knows you slowly realising your worth. Such women might derive great learning from exploring attachment theory as a central theme in their lives.

Rivals to Lovers dynamics often appeal to readers interested in equality and admiration within relationships. Here, the romantic tension emerges through competition, turning into respect. A theory worth exploring in this case might be social comparison theory, which tackles social hierarchy and the meaning one might assign to roles in society, as they might be drawn in by “social or mental sparring” more than the person.

Finally, those who favour Secret to Relationship plotlines, like in Bridgerton season 1, might find it worthwhile to investigate the topic of personas in Jungian psychology. People drawn to secret relationships could enjoy the tension of risk, trust, and emotional intimacy under constraint, with concealment playing a major role.

The tropes we gravitate toward rarely define who we are and are not perfect explanations. But they often reflect the emotional dynamics that we could be curious about exploring and might derive value from, as they naturally relate to us as much as the plotlines we favour. Fiction gives us a safe place to explore those ideas and give them trope labels to refer to.

Teaching Society: Integration of Animus & Anima

And on top of these interesting self-reflections in fantasy, as well as the mirror to the often proclaimed “male loneliness epidemic”, I see the romantasy genre also mirroring another important societal concept: The integration of Animus and Anima.

I love Romantasy books for how they build a fantastical world with a much healthier couple, a vast cast of lovable and deep characters, an environment that is deeply interesting to imagine, and the kind of feminine elements that male fantasy authors don’t bring to the table.

In the series Crescent City, for instance, there is a cute dog-like creature in dark scenes as well as the spicier ones, called a Chimaera. There are mentions of a purple unicorn that ties the story to the main character’s childhood in a believable and loving way, giving both characters not just a hard shell but an opportunity to discuss their own sensitivity.

And then there is the best thing about Crescent City: The otter-postal service. I mean, look at them, tell me they are not adorable.

And frankly, that is what I love and cringe over the most in Romantasy: They integrate cute daily moments into a fantastical plot that takes you away. There is romance, there is fantasy, there is spice and even some cuteness and warmth between the characters.

And that is A LOT in my opinion, inside one book. It is beautifully multifaceted, dances along the line between cute moments and death, blood and gore, married with the strength of a female lead.

In fact, one thing I find beautiful about romantasy that is criminally overlooked is that it includes the roughness of a hero’s arc with the softness of romance.

The integration of the masculine and feminine, animus and anima (I know if you’ve ever read anything by me before, you might be tired of it by now), is quite central to the current debate about feminism. The 5th wave of feminism is often quoted to be challenged with the “reintegration of the feminine amongst women”.

As I said, I personally love that a strong female lead like Bryce from Crescent City, who is clever, witty, strong, and good at shooting guns, can also be good at dancing and love a purple unicorn called Jelly Jubilee.

You might smirk, scoff, or grunt, just like I did when I first read the passage about Jelly Jubilee. You might deem it infantile.

And I admit that it took me a moment to realise that this was a reaction of my societal conditioning of what a strong character should be. In this case, excluding these cute facts actually makes the character more unidimensional, more adherent to societal standards of “tough and rough”.

While many laugh about Sarah J. Maas obssession with giving her female lead a “creative hobby”,, they do add to the depth of the character and give them a colour most traditional heroes don’t have. Feyre paints, Bryce dances, and Nesta reads smut, which all aren’t weaknesses, though we immediately deemed them as “weird” when first reading about them.

I love that through this the male lead also gets a chance to show more softness. Hunt in Crescent City also cringes in cuteness over a small otter delivering mail, and when he finds the purple unicorn in his girlfriend’s drawer, he sees it not as embarrassing but cute. He labels it as an artefact of her soft, childish side and gives it permission, while giving himself permission to love it too. As a human, not a man wearing a societal mask.

In these fantasies, cuteness and glitter don’t negate bloodshed and adventure. And that I find is the true novelty and amazing nature of romantasy that we are just starting to tap into.

Our society haggles with the constraints of gender roles, far beyond just being male and female. And yes, there could be more diverse representations in romantasy novels, and I don’t want to miss the chance to mention that here.

I think one of the best critical and yet not hate-speech-inducing discussions of this is the following video:

The Fantasy/Psychology Check-list:

Here is a simple checklist to embed the learnings I have stated across this article in the personal, interpersonal and societal domain into your reading practice:

1️⃣ Notice which characters you relate to & why (narrative identity)
2️⃣ Notice which ones trigger/attract you (Shadow-work)
3️⃣Notice which tropes you are drawn to (explore according to keywords)
4️⃣Notice what you cringe over & why (societal expectation vs. preference)

I hope that with this second article in my romantasy series, it has become obvious that not only is Romantasy not just “smut”, but it is also worth exploring psychologically. In the coming week, I will end this series with a third article drawing on the video above that answers the question: What is the duty of an author in the 2020s?

Until then, happy introspective reading and happy Women’s Day! 🙂