Alex Aster’s Lightlark Saga operates within the conventions of “romantasy,” a popular subgenre that blends high-stakes fantasy with a central romantic plot. Fueled by social media communities like TikTok’s #BookTok, romantasy often employs specific narrative tropes to drive its plot and explore its themes, many of which are central to Alex Aster’s saga. The novel is built around a fated love triangle, a common genre staple. Isla Crown is not merely choosing between two lovers, Oro and Grim; a prophecy dictates she must kill one to save their world, raising the personal and political stakes of her romantic decision. This trope is also present in other popular romantasy series, such as Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015), where romantic relationships directly influence political alliances and the outcomes of wars. Additionally, Crowntide begins with a classic enemies-to-allies dynamic. Oro and Grim, leaders of warring realms with centuries of hatred between them, are “enemies who would have to align” to rescue the woman they both love (26). In romantasy, such shifting allegiances are frequently catalyzed by romantic bonds, demonstrating how personal relationships can reshape entire kingdoms. By using these established tropes, Crowntide presents love as a powerful force, capable of forging political alliances, challenging destiny, and determining the fate of a world.

The romantasy series is set in the world of Lightlark, which is fractured into six realms, each suffering under a unique curse spun 500 years prior. Every century, the rulers of these realms—Sunling, Moonling, Skyling, Starling, Wildling, and Nightshade—are forced to participate in the Centennial, a deadly competition where one ruler must be killed to temporarily break the curses. In the series’ first installment, Lightlark (2022), the saga’s protagonist, Isla Crown, is introduced as the prophesied key to permanently ending this cycle of death. Aurora, the person who first cast the curses, befriends Isla in disguise but later betrays her, and Isla kills her. Isla succeeds in breaking the curses and falls in love with Oro, the Sunling king of Lightlark. However, her feelings are complicated when Grim, the ruler of the Nightshade realm, reveals that he and Isla used to be married, but he took away her memories of their time together.

These hidden memories begin to return in Nightbane (2023). Isla discovers that she and Grim fell in love while working to protect his realm from monsters called dreks and that she gave her life to save him. With war looming between Nightshade and Lightlark in the present, Isla fears that she will have to choose between Grim and Oro. Raising the stakes of her decision, a prophet declares that she must kill one of the two rulers she loves to save her world. Isla fights on the side of Oro and Lightlark when the war begins, but she chooses to return to Nightshade with Grim.

Skyshade (2024) opens immediately after the events of Nightbane. At first, Isla despises Grim for tampering with her memories and threatening Oro, but she gradually falls back in love with him, and the two are married again. Their wedded bliss is interrupted when Lark, Isla’s ancestor and one of the three founders of Lightlark, escapes from a subterranean prison and tries to destroy the world. To defeat her, Isla transports herself and Lark to another world. In Crowntide, Isla’s act of self-sacrifice forces her two lovers—once mortal enemies—into an uneasy alliance to find and rescue her. This established history of curses, competition, and conflicting prophecies is essential for understanding the characters’ motivations and their fragile political landscape.