Confusion between different fantasy subgenres within MM romance

I think part of the confusion is just that different people use different definitions for similar things. I've had discussions about this terminology with other romance readers, and there hasn't been a complete consensus regarding how everyone classifies things.

For a contemporary book with fantasy elements, I would use urban fantasy or paranormal romance. For a historical book in a real historical period but with fantasy elements, like Allie Therin's Magic in Manhattan series, I would use historical fantasy. For a book in a fictional historical period/setting, like AJ Demas books, I would probably use alt-historical or fantasy (even if it didn't have other fantasy elements), but I've also seen people use historical for these types of books.

But for a contemporary book in a fictional setting, like a royal romance in a made-up country, I'm stumped! I haven't seen a lot of these, and most likely I would just categorize them as contemporary if there are no fantasy elements (even if that's inconsistent with how I categorize historical books in fictional settings).

Categorization all comes down to vibes for me. For example, not everyone would agree, but paranormal and urban fantasy feel different for me. I use urban fantasy to mean books where the magic (and everything else) has majorly affected the setting.

For example:

Twilight is paranormal, and has vampires and werewolves. Humans are unaware of vampires and besides the Volturi aspect, the world is relatively unchanged because of the existence of these creatures.

True Blood has vampires and werewolves and fae oh my!, but because the existence of vampires is public the world is majorly changed. There’s the religious camps (oy), the fake blood being sold everywhere, the politics, the discrimination… all of that has changed the modern setting around them.

Or if those examples aren’t familiar, I also think of paranormal usually to have one “type” of something unique and different — like a group of shifters or only vampires exist — while urban fantasy tends to have multiple, on top of magic, and the adventure aspect is key to urban fantasy in my distinction. Plot that is unrelated to the romance. Of course something I would usually label paranormal would fall into this which would have me adjusting.

I would call A Royal Affair and The Pillar as alt-historical, which is fake history essentially. Countries that do not exist but act plausible to real-world rules. This is essentially where I’d put Captive Prince too, though one could obviously argue for historical fantasy but I tend to expect some magical or different element to make it fantasy.

Contemporaries with fake towns or countries are still falling under contemporary for me too if they obey the rules of the real world - but I have a shelf for fake towns and such on my GR so I am aware of which ones have that or not.

You probably find it confusing because there are no hard rules - fantasy is very... loose, genre wise, and people categorize stuff differently.

However, generally "high fantasy" refers to stories taking place in fictional worlds which have lot of magic, magical creatures, different races like elves, etc. "low fantasy" is usually more grim dark, realistic, has only little magic. The first examples of this were probably Lord of the Rings for High Fantasy and Barbar Conan for Low one. And urban and/or paranormal (basically interchangeable, imo) is "our modern world + magic". Often werewolves or vampires. Twiligth is paranormal fantasy romance.

But not all people use the definitions as I laid them out, not all people study up definitions of genres and GR uses tags by users. So it can have "wrong" categories so to speak. (you can often see F/M/M in a M/M romance, for example...) I wouldnt call heart of stone nor Charm of magpies "low" fantasy, its imo paranormal.

(tho sometimes "high" and "low" is used to mean "high - its own world" and "low - our world + magic")

Royal Affair and Pillar have no fantasy elements but are put into fantasy category sometimes because they take place in fictional places. And again, this is not official from publisher or anything, its done by users on GR based on "vibes". I have read royal affair and I would call it "historical" more, but I can see why people use fantasy. The kindgom and its politics are completely made up, and therefore couldnt happen in our world.

As opposed to something like, Red White Royal Blue - i mean, usa doesnt have a female president with a queer son currently, but it certainly could happen.

Summoned by u/JPwhatever but responding to the post instead of the sub comment.

Perhaps it's down to a matter of personal preference?

I call a royal romance set in a fictional country or featuring a character from a fictional country in a contemporary setting a contemporary romance.

By that definition, a royal romance set in a historical time period featuring a fictional country or a character from a fictional country should be called a historical romance.

However, some of these books you might classify as historical romance aren't actually set in a historical time period. For example, the Wiltshire book your reference, I've got that one on pause and the details are fuzzy, but is the time period actually stated? Sometimes when we aren't given a time period, we simply infer that the time period is historical bc dress, weaponry, living conditions, etc align with our knowledge of medieval times, for example. So then it's not historical; it's fantasy. Maybe that's the difference?

At the same time, if the Fielding book you mention is indeed set in medieval Bosnia with no other, I suppose you might say, magical elements then it would make more sense to call it a historical romance by my above definitions.

I will say though that I personally find adhering to the rules of a genre (or sub genre) to be limiting so I don't usually think too hard on correct classification. (You're talking to a person that categorizes The Song of Achilles and even Romeo and Juliet as romance, and who has received a lot of flack for it.)

For detailed definitions I’ll refer you to the “Classifications” section of this wiki page. there are a ton of categories, many overlap, and many books evade being put in boxes no matter how hard we try to fit them in.

For some of your specific questions:

• I consider Tavia Lark’s stuff fantasy. Maybe even high fantasy? It’s a completely fictional world, has a magical system, and there’s an epic quest.

• Captive Prince is fantasy purely because it’s set somewhere not on earth. I call this kind of book “ageless fantasy realm setting”, because there isn’t really any magic. Wed to the Barbarian by Keira Andrews is another like this. It’s technically still fantasy.

• heart of stone and charm of magpies are Paranormal Romance - set in the real world, with some magical elements added.

I don’t know the other two you’ve mentioned, but fictional kingdoms are sometimes included in fantasy because they do not exist on earth. The further you go back in time the looser this definition is, since we know less to differentiate real from made up.

• royalty romances in real countries aren’t considered fantasy Bc they’re talking about real positions and roles that exist, just changing the people within them. Similar would be president / political figure romance, or even wildly famous musician or actor romance. Clearly they aren’t real, but they could be.

That probably adds more confusion than you had at the start. Good luck! My goodreads shelves are a mess because of this but I enjoy the chaos.

I think everyone interprets those terms a bit differently and that's where the confusion comes from.

For example:

For me high fantasy first and foremost means that the book is not set in our world and must have fantastical elements, that's the most important distinction. If a story is set in a fictional place, but there are no fantasy elements, then it isn't fantasy. It's like all the old classical literature works that make up places, but have no supernatural elements whatsoever, no one categorises it as fantasy, so I share your mindset here.

Additionally, Heart of Stone isn't Victorian period, it's set in 1760s, so I wouldn't categorise it as gaslamp (which is the general term for Victorian period fantasy), but I can totally see it fall into (historical) urban fantasy category.

As a fantasy reader I’ve always used the terms high fantasy and low fantasy to refer, roughly, to the amount of magic in the story. So complex worlds full of arcane magical rules and hierarchies, tend to be high fantasy whereas simple basic use of magic in an unexplored way or with just the presence of magic creatures in the background is low fantasy.

The example I always have in my head is that LOTR is high fantasy whereas the ASOIAF books are low fantasy. There is a complex thousand year history of the rings, Sauron, wizards and elves in LOTR whereas in GOT the magic consists of the odd magic creature and instinctive powers like warging into animals.

I tend to think low fantasy sometimes revolves around characters doing stuff while high fantasy is more epic in scale. I’d consider Naomi Novik’s Uprooted a low fantasy as it’s one girl learning a few spells and dealing with some demon sheep in the village for example even if she does eventually fight bigger demons in the woods; it’s all rather personal.

Obviously Captive Prince has no magic but is in an alternate made up historical world so has fantasy vibes so I often naturally refer to it as fantasy (no high/low assigned due to lack of magic) even if it’s technically alt-historical. To me alt-history is a book like Fatherland where WW2 ends differently. I would never refer to Captive Prince as high fantasy though due to the lack of magic.

And the paranormal and urban labels are separate entirely from high and low fantasy which I only apply to historical settings since I think comparing LOTR to Percy Jackson using these terms is a bit pointless.

The prisoner of Zenda / the henchmen of Zenda are set in a contemporary invented European country’s royalty and are not fantasy. They are adventure books set in our world except there’s an extra European country that wasn’t there; the genre is called Ruritanian romance (using romance to mean adventure).