Romantasy Book Tropes Ranked By How Easy They Are to Make Interesting Again
okay so hear me out: i love romantasy. i am romantasy. but also? a lot of the tropes feel like they've been in a blender set to “medium aesthetic” and we all just nod and go “yes this is fine” while our souls leave our bodies.
so i ranked some of the top romantasy tropes by how EASILY they can be made good again, not which ones are the best, not which ones are ✨dead✨, but which ones are like, 2 rewrites away from being god-tier if you’re willing to do violence to them.
⚠️ this list is subjective. take it up with your protagonist’s tragic backstory.
🥇 1. The Cursed Prince / Beast / Exiled Royalty Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Listen. This one is so easy to make interesting again it’s embarrassing when it’s bad. Just add one (1) real consequence. Is he cursed? Cool. Show me how that curse is actively wrecking his life. Exiled? Give me the betrayal scene in detail. Raised by wolves? Show me him eating raw meat like a weirdo. Don’t just make him Hot and Sad. Make him feral and complicated. Bonus points if he doesn’t want to be uncursed. Bonus bonus if the heroine agrees.
🥈 2. The Marriage Trial / Forced Proximity Setup Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ You can spin this SO MANY WAYS. Make the trial political. Make the contestants unhinged. Make it morally messed up. It stops being boring the moment you stop writing it like a CW love triangle and start writing it like a dark social game. ex: Squid Game but hot. Don’t just have them accidentally touch hands. Have them make alliances and betray each other in the hallway at 3am. Be weird with it.
🥉 3. The Warrior Girl Who Has Never Known Love Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ The trick is: don’t make her secretly soft. Make her correct. Love should feel like a threat to her survival, not a makeover montage. She doesn’t need to be taught softness, she needs to be loved as is. Give her a love interest who isn’t trying to “fix” her but sees her sharp edges and says “yeah that’ll do.” Instant slay.
👀 4. Enemies to Lovers Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ Controversial take but: most of you are doing rivals to lovers. Or “mild professional disagreement” to lovers. True enemies to lovers is hard because it requires two people to want to ruin each other, and then have to live with that. There needs to be blood on the floor. There needs to be regret. It’s not banter if they wouldn’t kill each other in Act 1. Go full feral or go home.
🔮 5. The Chosen One and the Dark Mentor Difficulty: ★★★★☆ this one is delicious BUT. the power imbalance. the age gap. the moral greyness. the betrayal baked into the bones. it needs to be handled with scary levels of intention. when it’s done right? peak feral epic gothic. when it’s not? feels like a Wattpad fic from 2012 where the teacher falls for the new girl in detention. tread wisely.
🪦 6. The Mysterious Assassin Love Interest Difficulty: ★★★★★ okay. i’m tired. i’ve seen this man too many times. he’s got a dark past, two daggers, and no personality. he exists only to appear at the edge of a ballroom and go “you shouldn’t be here.” if you want to make him interesting again, you need to get into his actual psyche. give him weird rituals. make him bad at normal things. give him a reason he’s choosing murder over healing. or better yet, retire him for a few years. we’ve earned a break.
💌 agree? disagree? reblog with YOUR favorite romantasy trope and how you’d resurrect it from the cliché graveyard. 🪦✨