Romantasy Reveals Women's True Sexual Nature

If you walk into any (good) bookshop, you’ll see what I mean. The walls are painted with fantasy maps, and the display tables are stacked with thick paperbacks featuring unpronounceable names like Rhysand, Xaden, and Aedion.

Full disclosure: A Court of Thorns and Roses is my absolute favorite series, and as an author currently writing my own dystopian fantasy novel, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to create the perfect character dynamics. 

But as a writer looking at the text, and as a Gen Z girl who’s obsessed with these books, I can’t stop thinking about the massive, hilarious contradiction sitting on our bookshelves. 

Every day, women claim that traditional masculinity is outdated, unnecessary, or actively harmful. Society trains us to seek out gentle, “golden retriever” men, teaching us to treat any display of dominant or protective behavior as a red flag. We spend our time scrolling through dating apps in search of low-commitment clicks where nobody ever takes the lead. 

Yet, when the door closes and women choose what to read entirely in private, we’re spending millions of dollars on the exact opposite. 

It's a subconscious admission that the things we publicly call red flags are the exact things we're privately begging for.

We don't want weak men. We don't want soft men. We want a six-foot-five Fae protective warrior who will literally burn down an entire empire if someone looks at the heroine the wrong way. 

The obsession with the "shadow daddy" archetype isn't just a silly internet meme. It's a subconscious admission that the things we publicly call red flags are the exact things we're privately begging for.

The question we need to ask is: Why are Gen Z and young millennial women escaping into worlds where men act like warlords, while claiming they want a boyfriend who acts like a puppy? 

The Writing of the "Shadow Daddy" 

To understand why this trope works so well, you have to look at how these male leads are actually written. Take Rhysand from ACOTAR. Theoretically, he should be a villain. He’s powerful, intimidating, and ruthless. 

But the entire point of the character, and why millions of girls, including myself, are obsessed with him, is the juxtaposition of that power with absolute devotion to one woman.

In my writing, I realize how hard it is to balance this. Modern culture has made us so afraid of male strength that we’ve forgotten the difference between aggression and protection. A real “shadow daddy” archetype isn't an abuser; he’s a protector. He represents a specific type of masculinity that has been socially erased out of modern everyday life. 

Think about the classic Romantasy tropes that make people scream on BookTok. The “touch her and you die” line, the scene where the heroine is exhausted and cornered by the villains, and the hero steps in front of her. 

When you remove the fantasy magic, what is that actually tapping into? It’s a craving for a man who is strong enough to handle the weight of a chaotic environment. In a modern dating pool that feels incredibly passive, where guys are often too terrified of overstepping to even plan a proper first date, reading about a man who confidently claims his space and takes responsibility for the safety of the person he loves feels like water in a desert. 

The Luxury of Being Able to Drop the Shield 

Women today are under an insane amount of pressure. We’re told we have to do everything, be everything, and optimize every second of our existence. We have to build the career, pay the spiraling rent, manage the finances, stay perfectly fit, and project an image of hyper-independent, “girlboss” stability at all times. 

It’s exhausting. And honestly, a lot of the modern relationship advice we get just adds to that labor. We're told that relationships should be an equal, calculated 50/50 corporate partnership where you never rely too heavily on a man because dependence on the one you love is dangerous. 

Being vulnerable is dangerous. 

When you look at it through that lens, the rush toward Romantasy makes perfect sense. These books offer young women the ability to completely drop the shield. 

When a woman can open a book and get magically transported to a world where the heroine is able to be protected by an unapologetic, powerful alpha, it’s refreshing. She gets to escape the absolute chore of being hyper-vigilant 24/7. For five hundred glorious pages, she doesn’t have to worry about protecting herself, or pretending to be the strong one. 

There is comfort in knowing that the fictional world can go completely to hell, but the man on the page is competent enough, strong enough, and devoted enough to handle it. 

It’s an ironic twist on modern empowerment. We fought so hard to ensure that women didn't need men for survival, but in the process, we created a culture that shames women for wanting a man’s strength. We’ve branded the natural desire for male protection as regressive, leaving girls pretending to be entirely self-sufficient in public while privately devouring books where they get to be taken care of. 

It gets even weirder when you compare BookTok to regular Twitter or Instagram. On social media, our feed is flooded with demands for men who are entirely predictable and safe. We talk about green flags as if the ideal partner is a golden retriever in human form: sweet, compliant, and completely harmless. 

But a harmless man can’t stand between you and a crisis. And deep down, women know that. 

For five hundred glorious pages, she doesn’t have to worry about protecting herself, or pretending to be the strong one. 

If women genuinely wanted the soft dynamics preached by some modern relationship influencers, then the bestselling books in the world would be about nice, sensitive guys who spend three hundred pages checking in on the heroine's boundaries and asking for feedback on their communication style. 

Instead, the books breaking sales records are about dangerous men with scars, swords, and questionable morals who make executive decisions under pressure. 

We’re living a double life. 

By pushing masculinity into a corner and labeling it as inherently problematic, we haven’t eliminated the female desire for it; we’ve just forced it underground. We’ve turned traditional romance into a guilty pleasure that has to be consumed through a screen or a book cover. 

As a writer, when I look at the future of storytelling—especially in fantasy and dystopian genres—I think the success of Romantasy is a massive wake-up call. You can write as many articles as you want telling young women that gender dynamics are dead. But, the second they get to choose their own books, they will choose the alpha every single time. 

We don't need to choose between being strong women in the real world and loving protection in our private lives. The two can exist together. In fact, being vulnerable enough to become your man’s muse is true strength in a world that tells you to do the opposite. 

But we have to stop letting society dictate what we’re allowed to find attractive. 

The next time someone looks at the massive stack of fantasy novels on a woman's nightstand and asks why our generation is so obsessed with fictional alphas and fantastical men, the answer is simple. 

We’re looking for the one thing society today keeps trying to convince us we don't need: a man who isn't afraid to be strong. 

Samiksha Bhattacharjee is the Head of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance UK. You can find more of her work at Samiksha’s State of the Debate.