Reclaiming Female Subjectivity: Lyra’s Agency and Resistance within Patriarchal Structures in Deny Me, Dragon King

Deny Me, Dragon King, a fantasy romance distributed through Drama Box, portrays Lyra, a human woman rejected by the Dragon King Kael following a false prophecy. Her return with their half-dragon daughter, Amber, challenges a social order shaped by gender, species hierarchy, and royal authority. Using qualitative textual analysis and drawing on Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of woman as the “Other,” Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and Bell Hooks’s feminist critique of sexist oppression, this article examines Lyra’s marginalization, resistance, and female agency. It argues that the series both reproduces patriarchal romance conventions and creates space for female self-definition. Ultimately, the series emerges as an ambivalent feminist text in which motherhood, resistance, and romantic reconciliation complicate the struggle for autonomy.