You know I finally figured out what frustrates me about most romantasy and it’s not any of the usual tropes of “bad boy” or “powerful man” or whatever.
It’s that the male leads always have titles like Duke or Count or Prince or w/e and then those responsibilities never actually seem to mean anything in story.
These aren’t CEOs! These titles have real, meaningful responsibilities (regardless of how you feel about monarchy/feudalism/aristocracy!) you kill a CEO and the shareholders lost their bureaucratic trigger man and might make less money, if a Duke, prince or count is off gallavanting with a romantasy protag that’s granaries that aren’t getting organized, armies that aren’t getting trained or equipped to protect the realm, that’s a lot of actually important things not getting done.
So if your elementary protag wants some powerful man and you don’t want to write about the struggle between responsibility and romance, just make it an urban fantasy. stealth Fae court CEO. Vampire mob boss. That kind of thing, where your bad boy with money and power isn’t doing anything valuable or constructive anyway.
If we’re going feudal, and your bad boy is a government official, then no matter how much of a bad boy he is, unless you’re writing him as a goofy ass fop whose parents are trying to get him killed so his younger brother can inherit, his life cannot abruptly revolve around your cheerio-belted protagonist. He’s got a fiefdom to run.
