Where are the middle-aged romantasy heroines?
Give me a romantasy hero in the midst of a hot flash, and you've got my money.
It’s probably by now no secret that I adore romantasy novels. I inhale them like they’re my last gasp of air. I swoon over them. I squeal. I giggle. I love the fighting, the magic, the dragons. I love the political intrigue, and the wars between powerful gods. I love it all and I love that it’s not a man at the helm.
And of course, the smuttier, the better.
But let’s be honest, I’m no spring chicken. I’m not even a summer chicken. I’m closing in on a fall chicken… maybe even a Thanksgiving one. And as a non-masculine person, entering middle age can also come with a slow slide into social obscurity, followed quickly by hormonal dive-bombs and night sweats (RIP cozy jammies). Sometimes I feel like the amount of grey hairs and wrinkles I earn are inversely proportional to the chances of someone like me being the one to bond with a dragon. Or to land the hottie fae shadow-magic-wielding high lord.
(Not that I really need that, because that sounds exhausting. But it’s nice to dream.)
Where are we in these narratives?
Recently, I posted this reel on Instagram:
I want to know why these novels don’t include non-masculine main characters over 45. Hell, I’ll even take 40. Why do these characters – the same ones taking down the villain, fighting against tyranny, slaying the monsters, and nailing the hot warrior – always have to be in their early twenties? (Or in some cases, late teens?)
This message we’re getting is that the only coming of age trope is one of a transference from youth to adult. Is it that readers who want to escape into an epic romantasy only want to live vicariously through youth?
I mean, I was a youth once but honestly, zero out of ten, do not recommend.
The problem is that it’s not just twenty year olds reading these romantasy novels. In 2022, the average age of a romance reader was 42, and unsurprisingly, 82 percent of romance readers are women (although this study makes no note of non-binary or trans readers, and from what I can see, there aren’t stats yet on romantasy specifically).
While the publishing industry still doesn’t technically define romantasy as a genre, we all know what this song is singing.
Romantasy is the fastest growing (non)genre, fueled mainly by TikTok and Instagram (again, this is another phenomenon: social media influencing the decisions of big publishers). Between 2022 and 2023, sales of romantasy novels shot up by 42 percent, and the top two bestselling novels of 2023 and 2024 were both romantasy: Sarah J. Maas’s ‘House of Flame and Shadow’ and Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Iron Flame,’ the latter of which shattered pre-sales records.
Clearly there is a need for epic fantasy novels with a romantic arc and a badass main female character who has zero problems wielding a sword and getting dirty. It’s not just a need, but an unrelenting drive, a call, a massive vacuum that has demanded filling for… well, for a long fucking time. Basically, since your mom’s Harlequin novels with swooning damsels-in-distress tropes just didn’t cut it anymore.
Romantasy is still missing a major target though: middle-aged readers. Although there aren’t any statistics (that I could find) on trans and non-binary readers, one quick scroll through #bookstagram and #booktok and it’s easy to see that women eat this up faster than Alice chowing down on mushrooms and cake.
And for good reason. For decades, fantasy and science fiction has been a primarily male-dominated world. Everything from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to ‘Dune’ to the Dragonlance series, fantasy has been a space where cis-men are the heroes, and where the cis-female characters exist mostly for the male gaze, thus taking a backseat to the true hero: the dudes.
(Again, I couldn’t find anything on trans and non-binary… so yet, another vacuum that needs filling?)
And of course, most of the female characters are still very, very young (unless they’re elves or fae, then they’re hundreds of years old… but still don’t look a day over twenty.)
But the question remains: Why aren’t there middle-aged female main characters in romantasy? And, more importantly, why are they so desperately needed?
Why do we need middle-aged heroines in romantasy?
Let’s be real, the coming of age trope has been dominated by youth-to-adulthood for ages. With that coming of age trope, also arrives a discovery of the self, more complex and/or changing relationships, and a budding or change of sexuality and gender discovery.
So, what, do we think this only happens in youth? If we believe that, we’re forgetting a very important life-stage: perimenopause and menopause. And don’t for a minute think that this life stage doesn’t come with all the criteria of a youth coming of age, because it does. Sexuality and sex can change, perception of the self changes, relationships change, it all changes.
Additionally, how middle aged non-masculine people view themselves drastically changes, and oftentimes, that comes with a devil-may-care, zero-fucks-left-to-give, give-me-the-damn-sword-and-I’ll-do-it-myself attitude. And sex? Well, as Amy Schumer’s parody alludes to: it is, in fact, not our last fuckable day. The world (aka cis-men) just thinks it is.
Middle-aged women don’t necessarily have more sex – in fact, studies have suggested that middle-aged women have less sex, primarily because of a drop in hormones responsible for sex drive. However, middle-aged women have reported having better sex, mostly because, yeah, they just don’t give a shit what people think. There’s not much hiding, and for the most part middle-aged women know what they like and want.
So, if we know we like and want romantasy that includes us, why can’t we have it?
Why can’t middle aged women be the heroines of romantasy stories?
We still have a long way to go, but trust me, we can get there
Clearly, publishing is missing out on a key demographic here. Middle-aged women have money to spare, far more so than younger women. And let’s be real, we’re ready to drop a lot of those hard-earned bills on a good novel. We’re just tired of the ‘Apples Never Fall’ trope where the entire plot is a misunderstanding that revolves around a middle-aged woman unable to type a clear text because she wasn’t wearing her reading glasses.
So, the question then remains: why are we forced to read about a twenty-year-old getting bloody as she single-handedly slaughters the evil villains knowing that later that night, she’ll get some sugar the way she likes it? Why can’t we be a part of this narrative?
Are we really that obsolete that we don’t deserve our own man-meal shadow-daddy?
Come on, we can do better.
(You know what? Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.)
My debut book, THE MONSTER AND THE MIRROR, is now available for pre-order! Drops September 3rd.
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