Jade has a comment in Vil’s birthday vignette where he seems to assume that Vil’s mother must be a mage after learning that Vil’s father is not:
🐬: So your father is not a mage. Then your magical abilities must have come from…
👑: My Mother? Perhaps. Who can say?
And this is a fascinating assumption for Jade, personally, to be making, because both of his and Floyd’s parents are magicless:
But maybe it is a common assumption in the Twst universe that being able to use magic yourself must mean that one or another of your parents can, as well, even if this is not Jade’s personal situation?
Looking at a list of mage-parents vs. magicless parents, we have not received confirmation for most, but we know for 100% canonical certainty that Jade/Floyd and Epel were all born to on-screen-confirmed magicless parents.
Whereas Epel follows up with the information that both his grandmother and great-grandmother are mages we have not received such information about the twins (as of this writing), and it would be fascinating to learn if they are an example of mages suddenly appearing in an otherwise magicless family or if maybe they have mage-grandparents, too.
Concerning how magic and genetics are related and how non-mages are having mage-children: we have possibly never received any in-game explanation.
Deuce has a line of, “there are rumors that your magical potential is determined at birth,” but I think this might be less so a confirmation of a genetic connection being a requirement and moreso a comment on magic pool size?
Malleus has argued that this is untrue (“the more you use (magic), the better you get, regardless of your inherent talent for it”), and we have seen an example of this in game: Riddle.
Riddle himself explains that he can’t be certain if he had any special talent to begin with, because his mother decided she would be giving birth to an “exceptional mage” and then forced it onto him starting from when he “was in the womb.”
This is confirmed by Idia, who says that Riddle actually isn’t “some kind of prodigy,” but his magic pool was increased artificially.
Back to the original question, we have possible yet to learn if someone being a mage or not is connected to genetics in the Twst universe, with the only insinuation we’ve had in-game being relayed by a character who, themselves, came from magicless parents.
And while there are in-universe rumors that even if you are born a mage your potential is determined at birth and there is nothing you can do to change it, this has been disproven by characters like Malleus, who says otherwise, and Riddle, who is living proof that anyone can become powerful, as the size of one’s magic pool is something that can be increased through hard work.
Will be interesting to see if this area is to be expanded upon in the future.
Twisted Wonderland Reference Note 