I can summarise my novel in two sentences.
I would class my novel as, Chilvalric Romance with Elements of Fantasy.
Its central concept is the age old conflict between love and duty.
I believe the last sentence covers the Plot, Storyline and the Chivalric Theme.
I do not believe my novel is Chivalric Romantic Fantasy.
My interpretation of Fantasy is strange, unnatural, or unbelievable worlds with unworldy creatures, fauna, including non-human races of dwarves or elves as examples.
My story has none of those.
However, my novel does have a Merlin type character and it is set on a parallel earth. I do not regard those aspects as Fantasy.
Do you consider I am wright or wrong to interpret the Genre of my novel as Chilvalri Romance?
Are you confident you know the Genre of your novel?
Louise, I like your suggestion of Alternative History. It fits better than Fantasy.
Merlin was an example I used without giving much away. There is a minuscule amount of magic in my novel.
The reason I set my novel on a parallel earth was to make a unique aspect of my novel historically believable.
I thank everyone for the positive feedback.
You'd be wrong to classify your novel as anything which gives my forehead wrinkles. Chivalric Romance would.
From the description, I'd classify yours as Fantasy or Fantasy Romance. As soon as you set your novel in another world (which has its own world rules), it become fantasy. If it were set in our world but had magic and stuff, as with Harry Potter, it would be Magical Realism. Stuff like Tolkein is High Fantasy.
Think of comparable titles and check out their genre. Consider A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - it's down as Fantasy (among other things). Ultimate test: if you were in the book shop, where would your book get shelved? In the Sci-fi fantasy bit or the main fiction bit?
Bear in mind the genre tells the agent what they are looking at. If you send a cover letter which describes the plot of Terminator then says it's a Romance, that's going to get rejected because Romance is not full of violence.
Victoria - I feel that NA hasn't quite found it's definition proper yet but I think that, like YA, it depends so much on the voice of the novel. It might be better to just call it Romance, or Fiction, or Women's fiction and let the marketing department worry about who to pitch it at. For Mainstream categories, I think you can peg it as general fiction a lot of the time.
I've always called mine a romance because that's predominantly what it is. I've also started calling it New Adult because I wrote it for a younger age range than usual. I'm never sure my age range goes all the way down to 14 as it's supposed to, but I wrote it for the 18-30s. I saw it as a neglected catagory at the time.
However, I recently received my first submission back and I think what damaged its chances was the tag 'New Adult' so I'm pondering what to do about it. All ideas welcome!
Adrian, I would call yours fantasy but I think you're right to point it out as a romance first.