The Mother Curse in Fantasy and Romantasy
- Amy S. Yen
- Sep 11, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
**Updated on November 18, 2025, to correct some misspelled names and add additional mother examples.**
There are a variety of tropes that fantasy fans have come to expect in the stories they read. Perhaps the protagonist discovers they are all-powerful. Or a wise elder lurks somewhere unexpected and appears at the right time to impart wisdom. And don’t forget the companion who provides comic relief.
Another likely trope? A dead parent.
But not just any parent. Many fantasy novels, especially those written by men, often omit the mother. Granted, the absent mother is frequent in women-written fantasy novels, too. Even I’m guilty of it; the first fantasy novel I ever drafted in my 20s included the protagonist’s dead mother as a huge motivator.
I recognize that I’m making sweeping statements, but don’t you find it odd that even if an author deigns to have a living mother or maternal figure in their story, they are likely to die or be in grave danger or in a coma? Or that if an author is generous enough to keep the mother around, she is the two-dimensional symbol of a “good” mother: meek, attentive, and practically perfect. Or if the maternal figure isn’t those things, if she’s neglectful, selfish, or simply a nag, then she’s a “bad” mother, maybe even evil.
It's an easy trap to fall into. So, I can’t blame an author who wants to avoid those problems and chooses to exclude a significant maternal figure as a result. I would even be willing to argue that an author might be avoiding airing out the baggage of their own relationship with maternal figure(s) in their life. Who’s to say?
But don’t mothers deserve better? As hard as it may be to portray a woman as a mother without diminishing the complex nuance that comes with the role, should they be relegated to the background of the stories we read?
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Mothers should be selfless, attentive, and practically perfect
Regardless of whether the maternal figure is alive or dead, “good” mothers in fantasy novels tend to have similar qualities, particularly those of the selfless or self-sacrificing nature. Take, for example, Lily Potter, Harry Potter’s mother in the Harry Potter series; she sacrifices her life to protect her infant child from Voldemort. Or even Evalin Ashryver, mother to Aelin Ashryver Galathynius in the Throne of Glass series; while she didn’t sacrifice her life per se, she is remembered as attentive in Aelin’s memories and ultimately the central line of defense against Maeve meeting Aelin as a child. Both women are recalled with extreme fondness by their children because of their roles as protectors.
Then there are maternal figures like Aunt Winny in M. L. Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven. The protagonist, Sciona, values and expects her aunt to be selfless at all times. That’s because Sciona has been spared from doing chores, cooking, or anything else that may be helpful around the house her entire life. After all, Sciona’s education and research are of more importance to her and everyone around her. And so, Aunt Winny serves as nurturer, provider, and caretaker, her only concern limited to Sciona’s disinterest in eventually finding a man and settling down. Otherwise, Aunt Winny is pleased to brag about Sciona to all of her neighbors, at least at the start of the novel.
I suspect few will argue that any of these women were “bad” in a meaningful way. In fact, they seem to embody the best of maternal love. However, they also lack depth, consigned to the background of the plot. We know little about them, their motivations, or their characters, other than their roles as providers and protectors.
But what if mothers are selfish or neglectful?
When mothers are anything but selfless, protective, or providers to our protagonists, then they are essentially the epitome of evil. That may be hyperbolic, but stay with me here. Think of the fairy tales (aka Disney films) we’ve been exposed to since we were children. The non-biological mother figures, such as the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the stepmother in Cinderella, and Mother Gothel in Tangled, are the villains in their respective stories. They are all vain, self-interested women who prey on the female protagonist for their own gain and ultimately neglect their roles as maternal figures.
This same pattern extends to mothers in fantasy as well, at least when they are not portrayed like a “good” mother. Mother Archeron in Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series is a perfect example of the vain mother archetype who was more interested in her husband and his wealth than in her own children. Each of her daughters has some level of trauma that is caused at the hands of their mother (I’m guessing this is true for Elain), something we’ve seen both Feyre and Nesta work hard to overcome. The mother’s selfishness serves the character development of these protagonists, and that’s about it.
If they aren’t selfish or neglectful per se, they still might exist to have caused trauma. We see this in Tess Grim from Phantasma by Kaylie Smith. Tess is not only dead at the start of the novel, but her treatment of her daughter, Ophelia, is the antithesis to how Blackwell treats Ophelia throughout the novel and is among the many things that attracts the young necromancer to the phantom. Ultimately, Tess’ sternness and inability to give Ophelia praise and retraining her to a certain box throughout her upbringing and education is why she has a praise kink. Like those who came before her, she’s not quite the perfect mother.
Maybe they’re just accessories
So far, most of the examples I’ve discussed are mother figures who are dead during the events of the novel in which they are found. So, what about the mothers who are still living?
There is a general pattern of absenteeism among mother figures, at least in the fantasy and romantasy books I’ve read throughout my life. This doesn’t necessarily apply to every book in the genre, but it’s very hard to avoid. In Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, Clary’s mother Jocelyn ends up in a coma by the end of the novel and remains so for part of the series. In Lauren Robert’s Powerless, Kai’s mother only has eyes for his father and is never around to intervene on Kai’s behalf when the king tortures him. And then she’s bedridden and on death’s door the rest of the series due to the events at the end of the first book. Even Katniss’s mother in The Hunger Games is mentally and emotionally unavailable because of her husband’s death years prior. This serves as a major point of tension for Katniss and her ability to entrust her sister, Prim, to her mother when she leaves to participate in the games.
It strikes me that mothers, if not villainous, are relegated to the background of the fantasy novels where they appear. Perhaps it’s because their presence would create expectations inconvenient to the plot. How many quests would have been stopped, adventures untraveled, because a mother stopped to question where their protagonist child was sneaking off to in the middle of the night?
One of my favorite mothers in fantasy is Ember Quinlan in Sarah J. Maas’s Crescent City series. But even Ember is held at arm’s length by her protagonist daughter, Bryce, because she’s too smart and inquisitive, and Bryce does everything she can to prevent her mother from visiting her in Lunathion or getting involved in any battles in the series finale.
So what’s the point? Why have mothers at all if it’s impossible to portray them realistically or meaningfully? Is it better to just exclude them altogether? It’s not like I’m writing an article about the demonization of fathers, because I certainly don’t feel protective of paternal figures the way I do toward maternal figures.
So what’s the answer?
I haven’t even scratched the surface of my thoughts on mothers in fantasy, let alone delved into my theory that many authors avoid including mothers because they either haven’t dealt with their baggage with the maternal figure in their own life. And the fact that many authors, whether they realize it or not, use pregnancy as a way to save or redeem a female character? I’ll let Jac explore that when she shares her dissertation on the gender politics of vampirism.
I don’t really have a solution to the issue I’ve identified because I have yet to read a story where I think mothers or motherhood have been dealt with well. In fact, I’ll argue the only story I’ve ever encountered that I think has done this well is the 2022 film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. And you know what that did? It made the mother the protagonist.
As I’ve thought about this over the last few weeks and have discussed it with my partner, it seems to me the only solution is exactly that – make a fantasy protagonist who goes on adventures but also juggles motherhood at the same time. It might be comedic or even satirical. And that might be utterly absurd to the average fantasy lover, and they might argue that that detracts from the point of reading fantasy. But if fantasy is metaphor for the problems we face, where authors get to explore hard topics and themes in a safe space where readers can suspend their disbelief, then aren’t mothers and the nuance of motherhood worthy of exploration too?
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A writer and podcaster with an M.Ed. in Higher Education & a B.A. in Creative Writing, Amy S. Yen deep dives into 90s-00s nostalgia to make-up for lost time growing up in China, devours smutty audiobooks on her work commute, and reimagines literary classics into contemporary LGBTQ romance novels.
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