The taxonomy of genres is always a work in progress. It is away of describing empirical data, facts that may change across time. Dark fantasy, and the subgenres which can usefully be included within it – template dark fantasy and paranormal romance – are in some measure developments of the last two decades; they are publishing categories, but also ways of thinking about texts which already existed, or which were not automatically allocated to dark fantasy on their first appearance. Nothing that is said here is a criticism of earlier attempts at a taxonomy, so much as a clarification in the light of subsequent information and later texts.

John Clute in the 1997 Encyclopedia of Fantasy was almost sceptical about whether the term ‘dark fantasy’ was useful at all, pointing out that usage varied at that time to a remarkable degree, sometimes being used almost synonymously with ‘Gothic fantasy’, sometimes to sanitize horror fiction's perceived low-rent image. The Encyclopedia itself opts for a usage that this article will dispute: