by Jeffe Kennedy
One of the challenges – and rewards – of Fantasy Romance is resolving the demands of the two contributing genres. Fantasy arguably demands larger-than-life deeds, even heroic ones. We want our female leads to be more than trophies. Whether scholar, warrior, bard, sorceress, or ruler, these women are living lives of epic scope. They have courage, skill, intelligence, and determination. They’re nobody’s fragile flower. In fact their thorns are what allow them to survive.
However, a truth of romance is that—in a genre written primarily by and for women—there can be somewhat arcane standards of likability for the female leads. Expectations for women (and a hefty dose of programmed misogyny) require female leads who are loving, kind, and generous, who are the flowers of femininity, the rose in bloom.
Fortunately, kickass women are capable of being both at once: the rose and the thorns.
Personally, I love a thorny heroine. My favorite sort of female lead is one who has a thick skin, a well-armored heart, and a noble, generous nature that leads her to defend the weak and triumph over wrong. My favorite part is when her lover finds their way past those walls and into her trust.
Some of my favorite thorny heroines, old and new, including my own!
- Lady Veronica (Nic) Elal Phel, from my Bonds of Magic series, beginning with Dark Wizard. She tries to be reconciled to a life as a powerless familiar, but her pride and determination take her into making bold choices.
- Anhuset from Grace Draven’s Wraith Kings series. The prickly warrior woman first appears in Radiance, but The Ippos King tells her full story, and it’s amazing.
- In Intisar Khanani’s Goose Girl retelling, Thorn, the princess loses her name and chooses to be called Thoreena, which means the rose and thorns together. She’s an unassuming person by nature, but never budges on her integrity.
- Sorcha in Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest is barely thirteen when the story begins. She must labor in silence to undo a curse through great trials—and never gives up despite horrible torments and pressure. She is grace under pressure embodied.
- The warrior woman Kerowyn from Mercedes Lackey’s By the Sword is quintessentially thorny, with a big chip on her shoulder. She also has a tender heart and perfect pitch, so she never complains when someone sings off key. She was my first real warrior woman, and still my favorite.
- In Jennifer Estep’s new Gargoyle Queen series, beginning with Capture the Crown, Gemma is regarded as a pretty princess with an empty head—but she has thorns beneath the glitzy image, working as a spy to save her kingdom.
- The book Deerskin was my introduction to Robin McKinley’s work, and Princess Lissla Lissar is still one of my favorite characters. She’s traumatized to the point of amnesia, but she finds herself again and fights back heroically.
- My first and always favorite thorny heroine is Lessa from Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books. Dragonflight tells her tale and I will forever hold a place in my heart for the fiery woman who always followed her own path and never took shit from anyone.
- I’ll finish out this list with my own favorite thorny heroine, Ursula from my Twelve Kingdoms trilogy. The Talon of the Hawk is her story, though she appears in all three, and there’s a lot of Lessa, Kerowyn, and Lissar in her. She’s my first, and perhaps best homage, to the thorny heroine
About Jeffe Kennedy
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Visit her at www.jeffekennedy.com.