What do you think the next 'shadow daddy' is?

I was reading through the very interesting 'What do you want to see less/more of in 2025?' thread and it seems that many of us have a love hate relationship with the shadow daddy trope. It got me thinking about how many shadow daddy books there really are. Who was the original shadow daddy? Who invented this trope? The earliest I can remember is Shadow and Bone.

What do we think is next? A different villainous power? A hard pivot into golden retriever MCs? What would you like to see next?

Personally, I think in the romantasy genre in particular, its hard to pivot away from something 'dark' because the genre in particular calls for something dramatic due to the epic nature of the typical plotlines. It's hard to fathom a "cozy romantasy". Is that an oxymoron? Have any authors attempted to break this convention?