How Michael Whelan Made Me Love Dragons
In late March, legendary artist Michael Whelan posted one of his more stunning dragon artworks on bluesky, leading me to reflect that I likely owe my entire mental concept of dragons to a single man’s skilled brushstrokes. “The White Dragon” became the cover of a book by the same name by genre titan Anne McCaffrey, the woman whose books undoubtedly sparked a passion for stories about dragons in multiple generations.
I’m one of those kids. I have an almost viscerally clear memory of my first Anne McCaffrey book—Dragonsdawn. (Yes, I read the prequel first. I was a child of libraries in the pre-internet area, which meant you read what you could find!) I was twelve years old and utterly enchanted by the cover—a confident young woman with miniature dragons flying around her. I cradled the hardcover and took it with me on our family vacation. While my family looked out the window at the changing landscape, I visited a distant planet where a deadly threat could only be overcome by turning tiny dragon friends into giant dragon friends. The infamous Dragonriders of Pern.
But while the dragons enchanted me, there was another aspect of the book that I loved: the slowly unfolding love story between the dragon lady on the cover and her romantic interest. It would be fifteen more years before I achieved my final form as a romance author, but even then I knew that yes, speculative fiction and especially fantasy might be my favorite genre…. But I mostly liked it when it focused on female protagonists—and I really liked it when they found someone to kiss.
Fortunately for young Bree, McCaffrey wasn’t the only one infusing fantasy with complicated women in complicated relationships. Maybe it was my love of the way Michael Whelan painted dragons that led me across the library to one of the most romantically charged dragon covers of the ’80s: Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince.
In the (usually 800+) pages of Melanie Rawn’s fantasy novels I found everything I loved: dragons that you sometimes get to talk to, complex and flawed heroines who have to make hard choices and embrace their power, and an acknowledgement that romantic love has a power to shape kingdoms and a magic all its own.
(And dragons. Always, dragons.)
But as much as I adored what I found in the pages of these books, something was still missing. Yes, romance appeared. It was even important sometimes—the lifelong love between Sioned and Rohan impacts the nearly 5,000 pages that follow!
But it was still a subplot. People met, they fell magically in love, and then we got back to the politics and war and dragons. I was still reading fantasy, with romance as a sprinkles topping.
What I wanted, and didn’t realize it yet, was the whole romance ice cream sundae.
I also had no idea how fraught the relationship between these two genres I love could be. One traditionally seen as a masculine obsession for nerds, the other seen as the frivolous fixation of housewives—the brands seemed incompatible. SFF, so often the butt of all literary jokes, all too often reassured itself that at least it was still more serious than romance. I don’t know if that disdain was the chicken or the egg, but by the time I found my way to the no-man’s land between genres, romance’s hostility toward “tedious worldbuilding” books could be equally fierce.
Those who dared write in the space between did it at their own peril, doomed to make people on both sides unhappy. Often, the only escape was to decamp to Young Adult, a place where the two genres thrived together.
Into this tense stalemate, Romantasy exploded.
Fantasy Romance, Romantic Fantasy, and Romantasy
If you read some of the less informed but extremely excitable think pieces about the “new” Romantasy craze, you might be forgiven for thinking that fantasy books featuring women who fall in love is a concept we only invented within the last 18-24 months. In spite of the valiant attempts of industry experts to set the record straight, people hoping for some easy clicks keep telling the same story over and over again.
While books like that are hardly new, popular and mainstream use of the term Romantasy is. If you google “What is Romantasy” at this moment you will find hundreds of articles from the past year, all telling you different things. Bloomsbury might have once claimed to have coined it, in spite of the fact that urban dictionary’s first definition dates back to 2008. Most people credit Sarah J. Maas or the explosion of Fourth Wing. The quickest way to start a fight on the social media platform Threads is to tweet your personal definition of Romantasy.
Nailing down a definition is A Mess, but I will try to help.
I first remember seeing Romantasy used by a group of self-published authors attempting to bridge that uneasy divide between Fantasy and Romance. While fantastical novels with dragons and monsters and fantasy elements have always been extremely common in the romance genre (if you just want the goods, jump to the end of this post!), they were most commonly slotted into the catch-all genre Paranormal Romance, or PNR to your average romance fan.
PNR was usually (but not always!) a genre that involved something fantastical happening in our world, featuring a central romance storyline and a happy ending. Like its close cousin, Urban Fantasy, a Paranormal Romance series might set up a vast universe with a complicated cast of characters and unfurl a massive arc across many books. The main difference was that it usually (though not always!) would switch protagonists and relationships with each book. The overall world plot would move on, but you’d follow the next chapter of it through the eyes of a new set of characters who were falling in love against the backdrop of this world.
This has been one of the hottest selling genres in romance for years. Vampires, shapeshifters, witches, demons, psychics, dragons—if you could dream them up, you could watch them fall in love. They might do it in the future or the past, but for the most part paranormal romance stayed firmly in our world.
Epic fantasy set in a secondary world never quite sat comfortably in this. For the most part, it was called Fantasy Romance, but traditional publishers remained somewhat wary of putting their full weight behind more than a handful every year. However, across that no-man’s land in SFF, Romantic Fantasy was starting to gain real steam—and upping the pressure to find a way for romance to get in on the game.
If you asked me at gunpoint to define the difference between Romantic Fantasy and Fantasy Romance, I would tell you this:
Romantic Fantasy is a subgenre of Fantasy in which a traditional fantasy adventure has a strong romantic subplot. This subplot might span multiple books, and usually takes a back seat to the central fantasy plot. There is a hope—but no promise—that the relationship will end in a satisfying manner.
Fantasy Romance is a subgenre of Romance, in which a relationship arc between two or more people plays out against the backdrop of a fantasy world. This relationship might span one book or multiple books, but there is a rock solid guarantee that at the end of the day, the central protagonists will end up together and happy (however that looks for them) even if the world they reside in is still in chaos.
The most important distinction in these definitions is one of the more unshakable expectations in the modern romance genre: the Happily Ever After. (Or HEA) If you tell your average romance reader that they’re going to be reading a romance, and then deliver them romantic tragedy instead, the most polite thing they will do is curse your family to the ninth generation.
They will also tell all of their friends to never read your books again.
And this is why asking for the definition of Romantasy on the internet will get you into a fight. As far as expectations go, it is still a moving target. Some people swear it stands for Romantic Fantasy and therefore no happy endings are required! Other people swear that it is Romance that is also Fantasy, and expect their cherished HEA. Some have floated the term Fantance as the shorthand for Fantasy Romance. (I don’t anticipate this taking off.)
We may end up coming to a consensus on Romantasy before the next big thing comes roaring around the bend… or it might always be chaos. The only advice I can give you to navigate this trying time is to be careful about recommending tragic books to romance readers, and to never, ever ask about any of this on Threads. I’m serious.
F**king a dragon would be safer.
This Was All Well And Good But Do They F**k The Dragon?
Fine, you made it this far. I owe you the goods. To prove that the history of dragons in both paranormal and fantasy romance is long and fascinating, I have done my best to come up with a very short list of Dragon Themed Romance (recommended either by myself or by my trusty discord members) to show you the stunning breadth and creativity that has always existed in this genre.
Riding the Dragon, as it were, is hardly a new pastime. I’m just glad it’s got a shiny new brand so we can bring new friends into the fold! You might find your gateway dragon in one of these titles:
Weapons and Wonders by Devin Harnois: Still not sure you actually want to f**k the dragon? That’s okay! Fourth Wing may have become famous for people falling in love while adjacent to dragons, but romance offers great opportunities as well, such as Weapons and Wonders by Devin Harnois where our two heroes fall in love over mechanical magical dragons.
Dragon Actually by G.A. Aiken: It’s time to climb on the dragon, friends. This series by GA Aiken (who also writes as Shelly Laurenston) is one of the game-changing dragon books in romance. A badass heroine doesn’t realize that the dragon she loves to chat with at night might have something in common with the attractive knight who is helping hone her warrior skills by day…
Heart of the Dragon by Gena Showalter: Dragons have a reputation for brooding over their hoards and sometimes eating princesses. But some dragons have jobs, like Darius en Kragin whose job is literally guarding Atlantis.
A Boy and his Dragon by R. Cooper: Of course, we also love dragons with hoards. This book features a slightly hoard-y scholar in desperate need of a research assistant, and a hero who doesn’t realize he could be one of the treasures this dragon professor wants to hoard.
Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison: Another romance genre classic, Dragon Bound introduces us to Dragos, a broody dragon with a more traditional hoard. When a brazen thief comes to steal one of his coins, he’ll whisk her away to another world and teach her that she is more than she realizes, too.
Promised in Fire by Jasmine Walt: The first in the Dragons and Fae series introduces us to a world where the fae all but eradicated the dragons. The remaining dragon isn’t keen on being friendly with our Fae heroine, but the enemies to lovers trope comes for us all in the end.
Legend of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper: Dragons don’t just have to live in our time! In the Highland Dragons series, we get everything you could want: romance, intrigue, and dragons who live in the Scottish Highlands in the Victorian era.
Scales and Sensibilities by Stephanie Burgis: Prefer the regency? These dragons may not be the main romantic characters, but how can you resist a series of regency rom-coms where the characters get to have adorable pet dragons and fall in love?
Nathan’s Heart by M. Malone: Are you more of a modern era person? Do you like the idea of biker gang-esque dragons who live on the edge of the law? In this book, a dragon “retrieval expert” (thief) gets in trouble when his latest cargo turns out to be a woman–and they’re trapped in a storm while his mating fever is rising.
Dragon’s Jewel by Milly Taiden: Dragons don’t only have to come from our world! This novel crosses those Ice Planet Barbarian vibes (ask your tiktok friend) with Dragons to give you an alien planet where dragons rule and love with a dragon is inevitable.
I’m going to stop at ten, but believe me, I have only scratched the surface of what awaits you in the world of fantasy romance featuring dragons! Whether you like historicals or futuristics, our world or another, sweet or spicy, cozy or dark—someone has already written the dragon romance of your dreams.
Finding it might be an adventure, but isn’t that always the best part of dragons?
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Queen of Dreams
