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When feminist scholars employ the terms “compulsory heterosexuality” or “compulsory sexuality” they are usually doing so in reference to queer persons or communities who feel pressured by social, political, and or economic forces to perform heterosexuality, or, in the case of asexual persons or communities, to perform any kind of sexual attraction.[1] For example, recent texts such as Ela Przybylo’s Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Heterosexuality (2019) and Angela Chen’s Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (2020) use the term compulsory sexuality to describe “the ways in which sexuality is presumed to be natural and normal to the detriment of various forms of asexual and nonsexual lives, relationships, and identities” (Przybylo 1). However, the 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”, in which Adrienne Rich originally coined the term compulsory heterosexuality, claims not only that lesbian women are “channeled … into marriage and heterosexual romance” (182) but that heterosexuality is a political and economic institution propped up by social forces which teach all women to idolize men, reinforce normative family structures, deny or ignore sexual or romantic desires which exist outside of these structures, and more generally to “perceive [them]selves as [men’s] sexual prey” (187). While compulsory (hetero)sexuality may align with heterosexual women’s sexual interests, normative ideals about femininity, monogamy, and desire which are inextricably tied to the institution of heterosexuality ensure that all women, regardless of their sexualities, experience immense pressure to meet patriarchal expectations of sexual and romantic behaviour.
Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series (2015-2021),[2] and many other fantasy romance texts, legitimize the social forces feminist scholars credit with creating the compulsion towards heterosexuality by turning them into divine and/or supernatural forces through the genre’s pervasive “soulmate” trope. In these novels, male and female characters become supernaturally linked to one another by a divine and mystical force that affirms they are destined to participate in a lifelong sexual and romantic relationship. In essence, they are forcibly married to one another by some unseen and unchallenged power; the characters and readers are assured that these characters are a perfect match. Because they are compelled by some supernatural force to romantically love and be sexually attracted to each other, their commitment to the partnership is never in question. There is no danger of cheating, abandonment, or loss of love—a compelling fantasy for the reader. In many cases, these soulmates can never and will never be romantically attached to any other person. In these worlds, for these characters, Freud’s and Lacan’s conceptions of psychosexuality as “a system of conscious and unconscious human fantasies involving a range of excitations and activities that produce pleasure beyond the satisfaction of any basic physiological need” (Mitchell 2) become changed into a sexuality which is wholly directed towards a single person: one’s “soulmate.” All other desire becomes sublimated or eliminated in favor of desire for one’s true, supernaturally chosen partner. Therefore, if Freud’s and Lacan’s further assertions that “a person is formed through their sexuality” (Mitchell 2) remains true, it then follows that for these characters, their “soulmates” (or sexualities, for they become one and the same) become inalienable parts of their partners’ identities. Desire for one’s partner and desire for sexual satisfaction becomes one and the same thing, making the choice to be or not to be with one’s “soulmate” a choice between never or always being sexually satisfied—an incredibly coercive element of this pseudo-decision.
When novels make use of the “soulmate” trope, the social compulsions towards heterosexuality first described by Rich are transformed into a divine and observable force that cannot be questioned and can rarely be resisted. Therefore, the divine preference for heterosexuality—an idea perpetuated in our own world by various religions—is confirmed. The belief in soulmates replicates a religious devotion to a higher power that divinely “knows” what is right and what is wrong, including what kinds of sexualities should be expressed and whether one person should commit to another. The existence of soulmates obviously problematizes consent but also functions to enforce what I will refer to as heterodestiny. Using this term instead of the term compulsive heterosexuality accounts for the difference between heterosexual attraction as a socialized coercive force (as it is in our own world, to various degrees according to one’s culture and religion) and heterosexual attraction as unavoidably prescribed by the supernatural force that causes particular fictional characters to form romantic attachments, have sex, and birth children. Heterosexuality in these novels is not simply a compulsion of patriarchal society but a destiny that one is near-powerless to resist.[3] As this article will explore, the soulmate trope and all of its accompanying problematic implications are deeply ingrained in the ACOTAR series in Maas’s creation of the phenomenon of faerie “mates.” Importantly, the existence of the soulmate trope both legitimizes oppressive patriarchal understandings of how sexuality should be expressed and presents as an overreach of authoritative discourse. This use of authoritative discourse has the potential to limit readers’ ability to experience the text as a place to explore their own feelings about sex, sexuality, and romantic relationships.
Soulmates and Consent
In the fantasy universe where the ACOTAR series is set, humans and faeries live separately on a continent divided by a supernatural barrier that ensures the safety of the weaker human species; faeries are extremely physically powerful, remain alive for hundreds of years, and often possess magical abilities. Though faeries can form romantic relationships, marry, and separate in the same fashion as humans, with no supernatural element to their connections, two faeries are called “mates” when they are forcibly connected by the appearance of a “mating bond,” which is an intangible and unbreakable soul connection. The differences in the way that males experience mating as compared to females, as well as the reason mating bonds exist (as understood by faeries themselves), deeply complicate notions of consent in the series and serve to legitimize rape-supportive social myths in-universe.
Despite ACOTAR’s narrative focus on consent within sexual relationships, a topic explored by critics such as Laura Mattoon D’Amore and Erin K. Johns Speese, it is difficult to contend with notions of consent in a world in which one might be supernaturally or spiritually compelled towards heterosexual reproduction with a specific partner. D’Amore claims that within the series, protagonist Feyre participates in creating a community among the fae “where consent and choice are foregrounded as the most important aspects of their society” (29). D’Amore reiterates several times that Feyre is “granted curiosity, agency, and intense sexual pleasure” (50) within the text. Speese, too, praises Maas’s novels for “explicitly depict[ing] consent as a necessary component of sexual freedom” (3) and further insists that “Maas’s emphasis on consent counters larger sexual myths that reinforce rape culture in the United States” (5). Neither author acknowledges that the existence of mating bonds compels characters to engage in sexual relationships that they might otherwise not desire and undermines the work the text does to create representations of consenting sexual relationships. D’Amore downplays the coercive power of the mating bond when she references it only as “the true and magical bond that is the most desirable form of relationship in the series” (39). Speese concedes that the existence of the mating bond “complicate[s] this idea of bodily autonomy” (15) and further draws on the term “dubious consent” or “dubcon” from Milena Popova’s 2021 text Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent, only to say that ideas of “dubcon and coercion [are] important to thinking about these fated pairings related to consent” (15). Speese then poses the question, “Is consent taken away in a narrative when the heroine is fated to the hero?” (15) but never answers it. Scholars who praise the series’ representation of consenting sexual relationships often fail to meaningfully engage with how the existence of the mating bond undermines the agency and autonomy of every mated character in the text. This is because the texts themselves are incredibly contradictory when it comes to representing consent.[4] D’Amore and Speese convincingly argue that the text celebrates and romanticizes consent within individual sexual scenes. However, the series also presents readers with a fantastical universe in which faeries are constantly under threat of being supernaturally bonded to each other and mated faeries cannot be sure whether their romantic and sexual feelings are authentic or are the result of magical compulsion. These clear violations of consent are also romanticized—as D’Amore writes, being mated is “the most desirable form of relationship in the series.”
To understand how the soulmate bond is deployed within the text, it is first important to note that humans cannot experience the phenomenon of the mating bond until and unless they are turned into fae, which is a very rare occurrence.[5] The faerie Rhysand (Rhys), who is also High Lord of one of Prythian’s seven faerie courts, suspects that Feyre is his mate when she is still human, but they are not “bonded” until she is transformed into a faerie at the end of A Court of Thorns and Roses ACOTAR (2015). The mating bond in this series is often described as if it were an invisible rope that can be “pulled” (A Court of Wings and Ruin)(ACOWAR, 301) by either mate and through which mates can sometimes sense or communicate intense emotions. The mating bond can appear when two characters first meet each other, or it can randomly “snap into place” (A Court of Mist and Fury) (ACOMAF, 495) for two characters who already know each other. It presents itself as a powerful connection which compels two characters to form a long-lasting romantic partnership, to have sex, and to produce children. Though Maas subtly suggests that mates can be two male characters or two female characters, no official same-sex mated couples appear in the ACOTAR series.[6] Typically, “mating” involves gendered behaviour: the male easily identifies the bond, pursues the female, and she either chooses to accept or reject him. If the female chooses to accept the bond, she symbolically offers the male a piece of food in a “mating ceremony” (similar to a wedding ceremony, but one which can be spontaneous and informal[7]). The characters then experience what Rhysand refers to as a mating “frenzy” (ACOMAF 541) when they are compelled to repeatedly have sex for a sustained period of time (from a few days to several weeks). This frenzy also makes males extremely volatile, a feature of the text which naturalizes and eroticizes male aggression. It is unclear how these sex roles and supernatural compulsions would map onto queer relationships within the ACOTAR universe, which is perhaps why the concept of queer mates is suggested but queer relationships are never fully realized within the text.[8] This primal exercise is explicitly tied to reproduction by Rhysand, who surmises that the compulsion has something to do with the “beasts [they] once were” and “ensur[es] the female is impregnated” (ACOMAF 541). Therefore, readers can conclude that faerie mating exists as a romanticized biological imperative towards heterosexuality and reproduction.
In addition to faerie mating being a literalized heteropatriarchal force, the language that Maas uses to describe sex and gender as it exists amongst the fae is inherently queer-resistant: the reader learns in ACOTAR that in this world, the terms “man” and “woman” are species-specific to humans and do not extend to other anthropomorphic creatures. Just as a male deer is a buck and a female deer is a doe, a male human is a man and a female human is a woman. For example, when Feyre first sees her initial love interest, Tamlin, in his human-like form (Tamlin is able to shape-shift), she identifies him as a man and then quickly corrects herself: “The beast plopped into the chair, the wood groaning, and, in a flash of white light, turned into a golden-haired man … This beast was not a man, not a lesser faerie. He was one of the High Fae” (50; emphasis added). She then adjusts to the correct terminology for non-humans, next referring to him as “the seated male” (51). The logic of this choice on the part of the author ignores an understanding of the words “man” and “woman” as being connected to an understanding of socialized gender differences and not as being completely in parallel with the sexed terms applied to animals. It might follow, then, that if Maas insists on making this distinction, she might create different species-specific gendered terms for male and female fae, but she does not do this, despite the fact that male and female fairies perform gender in the same way that human characters do. Instead, throughout the series, fae are simply referred to as “male” or “female” because of this lexical gap. The distinction is perhaps meant to make readers understand just how drastically different faeries and humans actually are on a biological level, or perhaps it is meant to draw further comparisons between faeries and animals. Besides the intense primality of their mating rituals, faeries are often described as animal-like: they frequently “growl” (ACOTAR 108), “prowl” (ACOMAF 130), and “bare [their] teeth” (ACOWAR 398), and some even have animalistic features like wings (Illyrians such as Rhysand) and claws (such as Tamlin, who shapeshifts into a literal “beast”). However, Maas also participates in trans and nonbinary erasure by referring to faeries simply as either “male” or “female”; in doing this, she completely conflates the categories of sex and gender amongst the fae characters. The lack of gendered terms for faeries seems to imply a lack of any understanding, on their part, of gender as a social category of being. This absence erases the very possibility of genderqueer characters, just as the concept of fae “mates” and its inherent connection to reproduction limits the possibility of queer sexuality being expressed and explored in the series.
To exist as a faerie and have a soulmate, therefore, might be a privilege only afforded to cisgender and heterosexual characters: it is an affirmation that a monogamous pairing between one cisgender man and one cisgender woman is a superior type of romantic partnership as compared to other romantic partnerships. Rhysand’s cousin and third-in-command, Morrigan (Mor), for example, is regarded with suspicion by Feyre in ACOMAF and ACOWAR because of her undefined relationship with Azriel, Rhysand’s adopted brother and spymaster. In ACOWAR, Mor comes out to Feyre as being sexually interested in both males and females, but only romantically interested in females. Her tearful confession is shocking, not because of the nature of her sexuality but because she is a wealthy and powerful female who is over 500 years old and who lives in what is ostensibly the most progressive city on the continent of Prythian. If the purpose of mating is primarily for reproduction, it is unclear whether Mor will ever experience having a “mate” in the way that other, heterosexual characters do. Furthermore, the existence of mating as the reification of heteronormative ideals seems to correlate with extreme levels of distress for queer characters.[9] Mor’s non-normative desires enable readers to consider the implications of the soulmate trope for those who exist outside its boundaries as well: are people who are sterile, past reproductive age, or otherwise unable or unlikely to have biological children undeserving of a soulmate? Has this force which magically selects soulmates for various characters, which I have previously referred to as heterodestiny, decided that those who cannot biologically reproduce are lesser and undeserving of “true” love? Is the purpose of “true” love only biological reproduction? The concept of “mates” inherently places fertile, heterosexual characters above infertile, non-heterosexual characters, and therefore reconstructs as well as legitimizes patriarchal hierarchies in our own world which most privilege cisgender, able-bodied, heterosexual people and which oppress those who cannot or do not wish to conform.
The dark implications of the soulmate trope are also highlighted in Maas’s series by those heterosexual characters who do not immediately and enthusiastically accept their supernaturally prescribed mate: ACOTAR does not present readers with a world in which destined opposite-sex partners are always satisfied with these soulmate arrangements. Rhysand tells Feyre of the problematic history of mating bonds, explaining that females have historically been treated like chattel for breeding by males in Prythian. Mating bonds, it seems, create exacerbated sexist behaviour and legal practice because of the implication that females belong to their male mates: females are effectively the property of their mates, and worse, are supernaturally compelled to fall in love and have sex with these males. The nature of the mating bonds that exist in the text seem to affirm these attitudes as they are most often between a powerful, older male and a younger, more vulnerable female. Rhysand, for example, is nearly five hundred years older than Feyre, who is only nineteen (and human) when they first meet. Nesta (Feyre’s sister), the protagonist of the fifth novel in the series, A Court of Silver Flames (ACOSF) (2021) has a similar age gap with her mate, Cassian. Furthermore, Rhysand and Cassian are wealthy, influential, and physically far more powerful than their partners. Mating bonds that are less central to the story but are nonetheless visible to the reader seem to follow this same pattern: we learn from Rhysand that his father was hundreds of years old and the High Lord of the Night Court when he discovered that his mate was an impoverished teenager who lived in his territory and under his rule. We also learn of another couple, Prince Drakon and Miryam, who were mated when the human Miryam was given to Prince Drakon, a faerie, as a slave. The rare nature of the mating bond means that these examples are not carefully selected to support this article’s argument, but in fact represent over a third of the mating bonds actually confirmed within the text. Supernatural forces in the text not only compel characters to form lifelong romantic attachments without their consent, but specifically place women in unequal partnerships where they are more vulnerable to various kinds of abuse, reinforcing ideological norms of female submission and male dominance.
Feyre’s second sister, Elain, also has a mate who is far older and more powerful; however, Elain’s resistance to her mating bond, and thus to heterodestiny, reveals the sexist attitudes of even those characters such as Rhysand and his companions who purport to be progressive champions of female autonomy. Tamlin’s best friend and second-in-command, Lucien, discovers that Elain is his mate when she is turned into a faerie at the end of the second book in the series (ACOMAF). Lucien, who is partially responsible for forcing Elain’s violent and traumatic transformation, is then shunned by Elain throughout the remainder of the series: she avoids him when she can, and diligently ignores him when she cannot. In the third novel in the series (ACOWAR), it is explained that if a female rejects the bond, the male can experience a “mad[ness]” (258): the rejection affects him far more seriously than it affects the female. Lucien is physically and emotionally pained by Elain’s refusal to recognize the mating bond, and though she does not formally reject him, readers are aware of Elain’s more favourable feelings for Azriel (one of Rhysand’s best friends and also his adopted brother) when Elain and Azriel share an intimate moment in a bonus chapter[10] of ACOSF but are interrupted by a furious Rhysand. The problematic gender dynamics created by the existence of mating bonds is further explored when Rhysand confronts Azriel afterwards:
Rhys sat at his desk, fury a moonless night across his face. He asked softly, “Are you out of your mind?”
Azriel donned the frozen mask he’d perfected while in his father’s dungeon. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rhys’s power rippled through the room like a dark cloud. “I’m talking about you, about to kiss Elain, in the middle of a hall where anyone could see you,” he snarled. “Including her mate.”
Azriel stiffened. Let his cold rage rise to the surface, the rage he only ever let Rhysand see, because he knew his brother could match it. “What if the Cauldron was wrong?” …
“The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it’s possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another.” He had never before dared speak the words aloud.
Rhys’s face drained of color. “You believe you deserve to be her mate?”
Azriel scowled. “I think Lucien will never be good enough for her, and she has no interest in him, anyway.”
“So you’ll what?” Rhys’s voice was pure ice. “Seduce her away from him?”
Azriel said nothing. He hadn’t gotten that far with his planning, certainly not beyond the fantasies he’d pleasured himself to.
Rhys growled, “Allow me to make one thing very clear. You are to stay away from her.”
“You can’t order me to do that.”
“Oh, I can, and I will. If Lucien finds out you’re pursuing her, he has every right to defend their bond as he sees fit. Including invoking the Blood Duel.”
“That’s an Autumn Court tradition.” The battle to the death was so brutal that it was only enacted in rare cases. …
“Lucien, as Beron’s son, has the right to demand it of you.”
“I’ll defeat him with little effort.” Pure arrogance laced every word, but it was true.
“I know.” Rhys’s eyes flickered. “And your doing so will rip apart any fragile peace and alliances we have, not only with the Autumn Court, but also with the Spring Court and Jurian and Vassa.” Rhys bared his teeth. “So you will leave Elain alone. If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her.” [11]
This conversation with Rhysand exposes that both Lucien and Azriel feel entitled to Elain: Lucien because of the mating bond that exists between them, and Azriel because of the mating bonds that exist around them. Since his “two brothers” are mated to Elain’s “two sisters,” Azriel believes, as Rhysand points out, that he “deserve[s] to be her mate.” The existence of heterodestiny encourages Azriel to objectify Elain as something that can be “given” to him. Though Elain shows a clear preference for Azriel, Rhysand tightly controls her sexual expression and commands Azriel to “stay away from her” out of fear that ignoring Lucien’s supernatural claim on her might exacerbate political tension between courts by “rip[ping] apart … alliances.” While Lucien and Azriel vie for Elain’s attention, and Rhysand and Azriel make threats, Elain remains the passive object of their “fantasies” and control, unable to follow her own desires if they contradict her brother-in-law Rhysand’s wishes. Furthermore, the “madness” to which males may fall victim, should their soulmates reject them completely, ensures that females are made responsible for their mates’ health and happiness and must accept an unwanted bond or face the guilt of dooming an innocent person to such a fate. Elain and other mated females are therefore pressured by social convention, their own consciences, and by divine forces to accept a male’s unwelcome pursuit. Despite Rhysand’s progressive social policies, which protect and empower females in his court, and the disgust he expresses regarding the ways females have traditionally been systemically subject to violent oppression in Prythian (and especially in the territory of Illyria, where his mother is from and where he grew up), he uses Elain, on the basis of her involuntary mating bond, as a political pawn. The existence of mating bonds within the series frequently creates situations like this one, where female autonomy is violated due to male entitlement and aggression.
While critics of ACOTAR like D’Amore and Speese praise Maas for “resist[ing] gender scripts by presenting several characters that prioritize choice and agency, both sexual and not” (Speese 8), based on the above example, mating bonds seem to instead give male characters better excuses for following rape-supportive gender scripts. In a 2020 study titled “Sexual Consent Attitudes and Rape-Supportive Norms Among Gender and Sexual Minority Students,” authors Alyssa M. Glace and Keith L. Kaufman describe the concept of “sexual scripts” in the following passage:
[t]he concept of the traditional sexual script is rooted in Gagnon and Simon’s (1973) script theory. This theory suggests that human behavior is influenced by cultural scripts that define the behaviors that are appropriate and normal in a given context. The traditional sexual script defines appropriate behavior in heterosexual activity, based on gender roles (Byers, 1996). Under this script, men are cast as hypersexual initiators attempting to “take” sex from women (Byers, 1996). Conversely, women are cast as hyposexual gatekeepers who are responsible for maintaining their “sexual purity” by fending off men’s advances (Byers, 1996). . . .
Adherence to this script facilitates coercion. It encourages men to pressure women into sex, ignoring signals of unwillingness and nonconsent, because they are expected to “take” sex from women (Byers, 1996; Adams-Curtis & Forbes, 2004). Under this script, men’s coercive behaviors such as verbal pressure, deception, and manipulation in order to gain sexual contact with women are normalized (Byers, 1996). The traditional sexual script has been identified as a macro-level barrier to enacting affirmative consent (Willis & Jozkowski, 2018). (659-660)
The soulmate trope exaggerates the myth that men need and are entitled to sex, and that women are responsible for fulfilling these needs (in very specific and controlled ways, lest they be accused of having sexual desire themselves). Males affected by a mating bond—like Lucien—have a “good reason” to be the aggressor, and to pursue a relationship with a female despite her constant rejection. Likewise, the mating bond encourages females to ultimately submit to male aggression and give in to heterodestiny. Just as Glace and Kaufman recognize that “the traditional sexual script has been identified as a macro-level barrier to enacting affirmative consent” (660), so too do mating bonds in ACOTAR: mated males are supernaturally encouraged to ignore boundaries of consent, mated females are supernaturally encouraged to submit to the men who pursue them, and everyone is compelled towards sexual and romantic behaviour that is not of their choice.
Authoritative Discourse
Amy Noelle Parks, in her 2023 article “The Feminist Possibilities of Heteroglossic Spaces in Contemporary Young Adult Romance Novels,” argues that “at least some of the feminist possibility of YA romance novels lies in the extent to which the authors’ narrative choices encourage readers to grapple with questions related to love, pleasure and relationships rather than to absorb the authors’ intended (or unintended) messages” (2). Parks makes the important point that romance novels which promote heteronormative ideals or even align with oppressive sexual scripts that identify men as aggressors and women as the gatekeepers to sex can still be generative for female readers because “the goal of reading a text is to engage in intellectual and emotional struggle not to acquire received wisdom or appropriate messages” (2). Indeed, my own engagement with ACOTAR in this article proves Parks’s point. However, Parks also claims that the ability for readers to use texts as spaces in which they can explore their own ideas and desires is limited by “authoritative discourse” (4), which “tells readers what to think or feel, and what the correct course of action would be for themselves or the protagonists of the story.” According to Parks, “a romance novel deploying authoritative discourse might have a feminist message, but it would not open up spaces for readers to ask themselves questions about their own desires or choices because the proper outcome would be obvious” (4). While ACOTAR’s contradictory representations of consent within romantic and sexual relationships make it difficult to defend a binary argument about whether or not the novels have a single “feminist message” (nor do I wish to make that essentializing argument), the existence of mating bonds certainly closes off opportunities “for readers to ask themselves questions about their own desires or choices” because the “proper outcome” is obvious: faeries always end up with their supernaturally destined mates. Feyre’s “choice” between Tamlin and Rhysand is not really a choice at all, not only because of Tamlin’s abuse but also because Rhysand and Feyre were destined to be mated to each other since Feyre’s birth.
The extent to which readers are affected by this overreach of the author’s or text’s authoritative voice, established via the creation of mating bonds, can be observed in fan discourse surrounding the series. Parks concludes her article by insisting that “in the long run, it is more emancipatory—and more respectful of the agency of teen girls—to invite readers to engage in feminist analysis of texts and their lives, even if they come to some problematic conclusions. The habit of doing the analysis is what holds the possibility for feminist change” (14). Readers engaging in a feminist analysis of Elain and Lucien’s relationship are provided with the following information: Lucien pursues Elain, and she wholly rejects his advances, refusing to speak to him or spend any time alone with him. She instead pursues Azriel and indicates her sexual interest in him. A feminist analysis should, at the very least, privilege Elain’s autonomy and defend her ability to freely express her sexual and romantic interest and disinterest in potential partners. However, because the text ties Lucien and Elain together with a mating bond, many readers are encouraged to romanticize and sexualize their relationship, and to desire that Maas’s next publication sees Elain accepting the mating bond and entering a committed relationship with Lucien.[12]
Numerous examples of readers submitting to authoritative discourse in the way I describe are readily available online. On the popular fanfiction database Archive of Our Own (AO3), where fans of books, television series, movies, video games, etc. gather to read, post, and share fan-created stories, creators can “tag” their works as including a specific romantic/sexual pairing of certain characters. Stories tagged “Elain Archeron/Lucien Vanserra” outnumber stories tagged “Elain Archeron/Azriel” by over one hundred entries at the time of writing this article. On the social media site TikTok, a place where many ACOTAR fans post videos and interact with each other to make jokes, discuss theories, and generally celebrate the series, many fans have posted videos expressing a desire for Elain to submit to the mating bond so that she and Lucien can be together, despite their less-than-romantic interactions in the canonical texts. Usually, these videos are tagged with the hashtag “elucien,” which is a combination of the characters’ first names. One of the first TikTok posts to appear when this tag is searched was posted by user @bookishlyaries on December 2nd, 2024. This TikTok post is a video of two people dressed up as Elain and Lucien and standing in a field of grass. The person dressed as Elain runs across the field into the arms of Lucien, who picks her up and spins her around. In the background of the video is Taylor Swift’s song “The Alchemy” (2024), and text appears over the spinning couple that reads: “POV: Elain chooses the mating bond.” The creator captions the video, “Who are Elain and Lucien to fight the alchemy? …or in this case, The Cauldron and The Mother.”[13] The comment section of this video, which has over thirty-three thousand “likes”, is filled with hundreds of fans celebrating the couple and expressing their hopes that Elain and Lucien will end up together. One user, @written.by.emilie, comments, “If Lucien doesn’t get his happy ending, i fear i Will never recover” (Dec. 3, 2024, sic). @oristian writes, “this is the only correct path of the books. her match, her equal, her mate [white heart emoji]” (Dec. 2, 2024, sic). User @samiiofthewildfire simply says “She BETTER” (Dec 2, 2024). Over twelve thousand videos on TikTok are tagged with the “elucien” tag, many or most of them similar in sentiment to the video I describe. These fans disregard Elain’s desires and autonomy in favor of Lucien’s desires and/or the “rightness” of the mating bond, and often seek to find evidence or “clues” in the text that Lucien and Elain are destined to be together despite Elain’s stated disinterest. They submit to authoritative discourse in the same way they encourage Elain to submit to heterodestiny. The existence of mating bonds in the series functions to limit the reader’s potential feminist analysis and instead guides them to accept one “correct” version of the happily-ever-after.
Conclusion
It is possible that the contradictions in ACOTAR’s representations of consent serve as a way for readers to both internalize messages of consent during individual sexual scenes while also enjoying the fantasy of sexual interactions which are coerced—to “have their cake and eat it too.” The Popova text that Speese references, Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent, identifies narratives of “dubious consent” as emerging from a “community” of “readers and writers of erotic fanfiction” (5), where the lack of consent between characters is intended to be arousing for the reader. This is essentially the literary version of a rape fantasy—a very normal sexual fantasy on the part of women. According to a 2012 study by Jenny M. Bivona et al., which intended to determine why women fantasized about nonconsensual sexual interactions, 62% of their participants, all women, “reported having a rape fantasy of some type” (1115). The study concluded that women were most likely to have rape fantasies if they had a “positive view of their sexuality” and a “receptiveness to fantasy experiences” (1117). Furthermore, their research indicated that another reason women might have rape fantasies is that rape fantasies are fantasies of desirability, where women can imagine themselves as so irresistible that the object of their fantasy cannot help but to ravish them. Bivona et al. connected this sexual desirability theory to depictions of sex in “women’s romance novels,” where “the male’s desire for the heroine triggers his sexual motivation and his masculine aggressiveness disinhibits the use of limited force. The heroine’s refusal provides dramatic tension, creating a context for him to display his power and his desire” (1108). Elain’s refusal of Lucien might follow this same romance novel script and ultimately serve the same purpose Bivona et al. describe. The danger, for readers, is not in enjoying a rape fantasy but in adopting and romanticizing rape-supportive norms from a text that, at first glance, does not appear to be a dubcon story and does not ever encourage readers to consider sex between mates to be nonconsensual.
Despite the text’s vague intentions concerning how readers are affected by its use of the soulmate trope, it remains true that the existence of mates within the ACOTAR series functions to complicate the series’s representation of consent and potentially discourages readers from performing their own feminist analysis of characters’ romantic and sexual relationships. The combination of these two effects means that readers of ACOTAR encounter contradictory messages about the importance of consent—some against and some in alignment with rape-supportive norms—and, perhaps most importantly, are encouraged not to question these contradictions. Progressive feminists’ focus on the intersectional violence of patriarchy further exposes the dangers of romanticizing (and discouraging the criticism of) compulsory heterosexuality. Lola Olufemi’s 2020 text Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power outlines the disproportionate effects of patriarchal oppression on poor women of colour, and is specific in identifying “the sexist state” as the architect of gendered inequality in the real world. The focus on whiteness in the ACOTAR novels might therefore hide from readers the most dangerous effects of supernaturally prescribed heterosexuality, as white protagonists Feyre and Nesta do not represent those most vulnerable to abuses of state (and in ACOTAR, divine) power. The text ultimately presents readers with a world in which powerful supernatural creatures are slaves to heterodestiny, and its authoritative voice insists not only that heterodestiny is sexy and desirable, but also that the elimination of compulsory heterosexuality in our own universe is a hopeless and needless cause.
[1] The concept behind the creation of these terms has also been used to create terms to describe the experience of other communities who feel pressure to conform to normative social/sexual behaviours. For example, Angela Willey’s 2014 article “Constituting Compulsory Monogamy: Normative Femininity at the Limits of Imagination” discussed how representations of normative femininity in media “function … to constitute monogamous and non-monogamous possibilities as desirable and undesirable, respectively” (622).
[2] This series continues to expand, with Maas promising at least one more title in the coming years. For the purposes of this article, A Court of Thorns and Roses and its abbreviation, ACOTAR, will be used without italicization to refer to the series as a whole, while A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) will be used to refer to the first novel in the series.
[3] As I explain later in this section, there are certain characters in the ACOTAR series who attempt to resist the soulmate bond, to unknowable degrees of success.
[4] Jenna Jorgensen’s 2021 article “The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature” also does not contend with forced mating within the series. She too describes only that Feyre “eventually falls in love with [Rhysand],” and states that this new love is explicitly representative of Feyre’s healing rather than a possible additional violation of her autonomy.
[5] Maas describes only four instances of this phenomenon in the past 500 years of Prythian’s history, three of which are the transformations of Feyre and her two sisters. Prythian, the setting of the ACOTAR series, is the continent on which faeries and humans live separately.
[6] Interestingly, though there are no confirmed same-sex mates in the ACOTAR universe, Maas does refer to two Pegasuses as heterosexual mates in A Court of Silver Flames (421). This reference implies that animals are granted mated relationships before queer people within the series, indicating that queer representation is either of low priority or intentionally lacking.
[7] For example, when Feyre accepts Rhysand as her mate, it is when they are alone, in a mountain cabin, with soup she has heated on the stove.
[8] None of the confirmed, “mated” pairs in the text are same-sex pairs. It is suggested in ACOWAR that the High Lord of the Dawn Court, Thesan, is mated to the male captain of his armies. However, this is simply speculation on the part of Rhysand, who believes that there may be a bond, but that “Thesan didn’t dare acknowledge it” (403) while he was under threat. This rumor about two incredibly minor characters—one of whom does not even have a name—is the closest the text comes to the representation of queer “mates.”
[9] Steven J. Boyer and Tierney K. Lorenz’s 2020 study “The Impact of Heteronormative Ideals Imposition on Sexual Orientation Questioning Distress” found “that prescription of heteronormative ideals was associated with a distressing sexual orientation questioning process” (97). If the social prescription of heteronormative ideals in our own world correlates to distress on the part of queer people, then heterodestiny, the divine prescription of heteronormative ideals, can be identified as a likely reason for Mor spending 500 years being tortured by the reality of being bisexual and homoromantic.
[10] A “bonus chapter” is a chapter only included in certain special editions of a novel, or one that is released online or in subsequent printings after initial publication, in order to increase fan excitement and discussion as well as to “tease” elements of future books. For example, a previous bonus chapter featuring Rhysand’s second adopted brother, Cassian, and Feyre’s elder sister, Nesta, anticipated the arrival of the book which features their relationship (ACOSF). The bonus chapter mentioned here anticipates a sixth novel in the series which focuses on Elain’s romantic endeavors and her potential suitors (Lucien and Azriel).
[11] No page citations exist for bonus chapters, as they only appear at the end of certain special editions of each text. This particular bonus chapter was included in the Books-A-Million edition of A Court of Silver Flames and was then shared online by fans. Books-A-Million is a chain bookstore operating in the United States.
[12] Maas has confirmed in various interviews and appearances that she plans to release a sixth book in the ACOTAR series, though no official release date has been announced. She has heavily hinted that this new book will center Elain.
[13] “The Cauldron” and “The Mother” are names for divinities worshipped by characters in ACOTAR. These divinities are presumably responsible for creating mated pairings.
Works Cited
Bivona et al. “Women’s Rape Fantasies: An Empirical Evaluation of the Major Explanations.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 41, no. 5, 2012, pp. 1107–19.
Boyer, Steven J. and Lorenz, Tierney K. “The Impact of Heteronormative Ideals Imposition on Sexual Orientation Questioning Distress.” Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, vol. 7, no. 1, 2020, pp. 91–100.
Chen, Angela. Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Beacon Press, 2020.
D’Amore, Laura Mattoon. Vigilante Feminists and Agents of Destiny: Violence, Empowerment, and the Teenage Super/heroine. Lexington Books, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2021.
Glace, Alyssa M. and Kaufman, Keith L. “Sexual Consent Attitudes and Rape-Supportive Norms Among Gender and Sexual Minority Students.” Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 20, no. 1, 2020, pp. 657-75.
Jorgensen, Jeana. “The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature.” Humanities, vol. 10, no. 1, 2021.
Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Thorns and Roses. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
———. A Court of Mist and Fury. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.
———. A Court of Wings and Ruin. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.
———. A Court of Frost and Starlight. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
———. A Court of Silver Flames. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.
Mitchell, Juliet. “Introduction.” Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne, edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, W. W. Norton and Pantheon Books 1982, pp. 1-26.
Olufemi, Lola. Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power. Pluto Press, 2020.
Parks, Amy Noelle. “The Feminist Possibilities of Heteroglossic Spaces in Contemporary Young Adult Romance Novels.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1-17.
Popova, Milena. Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent. The MIT Press, 2021.
Przybylo, Ela. Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Heterosexuality. The Ohio State University Press, 2019.
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, edited by Ann Snitow et al, Monthly Review Press 1983, pp. 177-205.
Speese, Erin K. Johns. “Came for the Smut, Stayed by Consent: Desire and Consent in Sarah J. Maas’s Fictional Worlds.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies, vol. 13, 2024, pp. 1-19.
Willey, Angela. “Constituting Compulsory Monogamy: Normative Femininity at the Limits of Imagination.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 24, no. 6, 2015, pp. 621-633
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