The Legend of the Pirate Queen
The first known ancestor of the mutant Magneto was Lucy Keough also known as Red Lucy. She was an infamous, merciless Pirate Queen and reputedly one of the finest swordswomen and greatest strategists of her time. In the year 1587, just as her ship the Scarlet Raider was engaging a Spanish ship, the spirit of Lucy's descendant, the Scarlet Witch became trapped in her body after a villain had sent it into the past. During the battle with the enemy’s ships crew Lucy, under Wanda's influence swore off killing her enemies. This act of kindness would soon come back to haunt Lucy.
Red Lucy had recently had twins named Quentin and Lenore. She had hidden the children in a cottage on the Normandy coast with a woman named Vivienne for their protection. Every so often she would pilgrimage to visit the children. After one such visit she was ambushed by the Captain of the Spanish Ship she had spared. During the melee, the Scarlet Witch's hex power erupted from Lucy's body saving her. To thank Wanda for saving her, Lucy vowed to return Wanda to her proper time and body. To do so she consulted a seer named Valmoora, who confirmed that the Scarlet Witch was indeed her descendant. Valmoora also showed Lucy visions of her children growing up along with images of her other future descendents, Quicksilver and Magneto. Under Valmooora’s guidance, Lucy managed to send Wanda back to her correct place in history. The event however changed Lucy dramatically and she decided to give up being a pirate to focus instead on keeping her children safe and secure the birth of the Scarlet Witch. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #61-62]
World War II
As Valmoora had prophesized Lucy's bloodline did continue throughout the centuries. During the early part of the 20th Century, in Germany, a Jewish family called the Eisenhardts was blessed with a boy named Max. Max was destined to become the mutant Magneto and father of the Scarlet Witch. His father, Jakob Eisenhardt, was a civil servant and had been a decorated soldier in World War I. His mother's name was Edie. It's not known whether it was Edie or Jakob that was the descendant of Lucy. Max also had an older sister named Ruth who worked in a flower shop. He was also very close with his father's brother Erich, a jeweler. By the time Max was nine the Nazis had started to come into power. As a Jewish family living in Nazi Germany it became apparent remaining in Germany was a death sentence and they reluctantly decided to flee to Poland. Later while in Warsaw the family was captured by Nazi soldiers and all except Max were killed.
During the time Max was interned in Auschwitz he encountered a girl from his past called Magda. Max had known Magda as a child as she had been the daughter of a cleaning lady at his school. Her being the only link to his past Max became very protective of the girl. Eventually the two of them managed to escape from the concentration camp and the Nazis, starting a new life together. As they grew, they married and had a daughter, named Anya. Tragically, however, Anya was killed years later in a fire, while the secret police held Magnus back from rescuing her. He lashed out with his newly discovered magnetic powers, killing the crowd. Magda was horrified at his actions, and fled from his presence, both of them unaware at the time that she was pregnant. [Uncanny X-Men #150, X-Men: Magneto Testament #1-5, Classic X-Men #12]
The Twins
Magda soon chanced upon Mount Wundagore, where she met the evolved cow-woman Bova, who mid-wifed her twins, Wanda and Pietro. Magda fled into the night shortly after the twins were born, never to be seen again. Though a gravesite for her was shown [X-Men Unlimited (1st series) #2], neither Magneto, Bova, nor anyone else has claimed to have actually found her body. It may simply be a ceremonial marker of her passing.
Another couple had arrived at Wundagore within days of Magda giving birth: Robert and Madelyne Joyce Frank, the 1940's crime-fighters Whizzer and Miss America, who were also expecting a baby. When Madelyne and her baby died in childbirth, Bova tried to assuage Robert's pain by presenting Wanda and Pietro as his own children. Frank couldn't handle his wife's death, and ran off into the night leaving the twins he believed to be his own in Bova's care. [Giant-Size Avengers #1] Not sure what to do next, Bova presented the twins to her master, the High Evolutionary, and he took them down into the countryside, giving them to a Romany couple named Django and Marya Maximoff, who had recently lost their own children, Mateo and Ana. The Maximoffs raised Wanda and Pietro as their own, but when raiders attacked their camp and set fire to the caravan, the young twins ran off into the night, believing their parents had died in the fire. This trauma created a block in their memories, so that years later the pair would not remember much of anything from before the fire. [Avengers (1st series) #182, 186]
Wanda and Pietro grew of age, and were ironically found and recruited by Magneto into his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, with all involved unaware of their relationship. Upon hearing the Whizzer's tale of his wife's death in Giant-Size Avengers #1, the Scarlet Witch concluded that he must be her father, and she and her brother began calling themselves Wanda and Pietro Frank. The twins learned most of the truth much later at Wundagore, when they met Bova who told them the tale of Magda and her unnamed but dangerous husband. [Avengers (1st series) #187]
The two did not learn their father's identity for quite some time, but comic readers were treated to a scene of Magneto mourning the loss of his beloved Magda one month later. [Uncanny X-Men #125] Years later, Magneto would track Magda's path to Wundagore and force the truth out of Bova; he then came to his children and revealed their relation to one another. [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (1st series) #4]
The Devil had a Daughter
In addition to Wanda and Pietro, Magnus came to have another daughter. At some point, he slept with a woman who would bear his child, a girl who grew up calling herself Lorna Dane. Adopted by an ordinary couple, Lorna grew of age unaware of her family history until Mesmero and his Demi-Men captured her in the name of Magneto, activated her magnetic powers, and claimed she was the Master of Magnetism's daughter. Iceman did some research, however, and found newspaper files and documentation proving that Lorna's true parents were killed in a plane crash, and she was then adopted by her (supposed) father's sister and her husband...the Danes. Since the Magneto working with Mesmero turned out to be a robotic doppelganger anyway, Lorna accepted that Magneto was not her father. [Uncanny X-Men #49-52]
Years later, she ended up learning that they actually were related by comparing her blood sample to Magneto's. She also uncovered evidence that the plane crash that supposedly killed her birth parents had been highly magnetized. [Uncanny X-Men #430-431] The implication made here seems to be that Magneto left Lorna's mother and she found another man to love her and her child. Magneto returned, possibly because he didn't know about the child, and caused their plane to crash. Lorna was then adopted by her first adopted father's sister and her family.
Another person claiming relationship to Lorna was the Savage Land priestess of the sun, Zaladane. She kidnapped Lorna and managed to steal her magnetic powers from her, supposedly because they were sisters. [Uncanny X-Men #249-250] In fact, it is more likely that they were adopted sisters, with Zala being the true daughter of the Dane couple who raised Lorna, who for some reason left home and her family when Lorna was recently adopted and too young to remember her older "sister". Genetically, Zaladane would believe she was Lorna's cousin, since she should think that her uncle who died in the plane crash is Lorna's biological father. Since this would mean they aren’t related by blood, though, it's unclear how the power transfer machine could have been successful. Another possibility then is that Zala is the firstborn child of Lorna’s mother and they were both adopted by the Danes after the plane crash. To date, however, Zaladane’s role in Lorna’s history has not been addressed since Polaris’s true paternity was revealed.
Trials and Tribulations
Unlike Lorna, Wanda and Pietro both got married and had families of their own. After being injured in a battle with the Sentinels, Quicksilver was found by the Inhuman girl Crystal and brought to the Great Refuge where she nursed him back to health. This affection turned to love, and they got married. Years later, they would have a daughter, who would be named Luna after the Inhumans' home on the moon. [Fantastic Four (1st series) #131, 150, 240, 248] Pietro and Crystal's relationship soured, however, as Crystal began to feel he was neglecting her and had an affair with a real estate salesman in New Jersey. [during Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series)]
The affair seemed to drive Pietro into madness, though it was later revealed that he had been infuenced by Maximus. As Inhuman law is very strict on the preservation of marriage, the couple were still considered married and for a while they even tried to reconcile. [Avengers (1st series) #369-402] During that time, Crystal and Quicksilver were sought out by a boy named Tuc who apparently was their future son from an alternate future, but he may simply have been a ruse by Immortus and the Space Phantoms, like many characters seen during the “Crossing” incident. [Avengers (1st series) #390] Eventually, fate tore the couple apart again with Crystal being believed dead for a while and afterwards different, sometimes conflicting duties getting in the way of the couple. Finally, after Pietro was caught stealing the Terrigenesis crystals from the Inhumans, the Inhuman Genetic Council granted Crystal’s petition for annulment. [Silent War #3]
Wanda has fared even worse than her brother in the long run. She came to love the synthetic man called the Vision during their time together in the Avengers, and they were ultimately married by Immortus in Giant-Size Avengers #4. Vision was a synthezoid, originally created in the 1930's by Phineas Thomas Horton as the original Human Torch, and then remodeled into his current appearance in the modern era by Ultron, using the brain wave patterns of the then-dead Avenger Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man, as a basis for his personality. [Avengers (1st series) #57, 135] Overcoming all odds, Wanda would conduct the magic of an entire town of witches in order to make it possible for her to bear the Vision's child. She gave birth to twin sons, named Thomas and William after her husband's creator and the last name of the man his mind was created from. [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #4, 12] Despite some initial resentment, Wanda and Vision were welcomed into the Williams' family, with Wonder Man acting as the children's Uncle Simon and Martha Williams, Simon's mother, accepting Vision as her son and the twins as her grandsons.
Everything started to go wrong for Wanda once Immortus began implementing his lifelong plans for her. Her husband was kidnapped and dismantled by the world's governments in West Coast Avengers #42-45, erasing his memories and capacity for feeling emotion. This act would eventually be recognized as an official ending to their marriage, for the man Wanda loved effectively no longer existed. Even worse, she was also confronted with the fact that her children were not technically real - they were two slivers of the demon-lord Mephisto's then-scattered essence, which she subconsciously gathered with her hex power to give her children souls as they were born. Mephisto reabsorbed these slivers of himself, and then it was as if Thomas and William never existed. [Avengers West Coast #51-52] Kang and Mantis' adopted sons Tobias and Malachi from The Crossing were implied to have been adult versions of Thomas and William, but the revelations from Avengers Forever confirmed they were simply a pair of Space Phantoms, another part of Immortus' vast schemes.
The Grow Up So Fast
Recently, however, two boys have appeared on the scene who may in fact be reincarnations of the Scarlet Witch's children. Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd are superhuman teenagers who have joined a team of Young Avengers as Wiccan and Speed. Despite having never met until their teens, the boys are virtually identical twins except for their hair color, with Tommy's being prematurely white like Quicksilver and Magneto. When the Super-Skrull heard their names (identical to Wanda's twins), he simply assumed they were the children of the Scarlet Witch mentioned in Skrull intelligence file. Upon hearing the full story of Wanda's children, Wiccan has decided that he and Speed must be the reincarnated souls of Thomas and William. His conclusions have yet to be confirmed [Young Avengers #10-12]
Another child of the Scarlet Witch who has appeared in the main Marvel universe is Nocturne, a former member of the dimension-hopping Exiles who got stranded on the main reality’s Earth for a while. Nocturne, aka Talia Josephine Wagner, is the daughter of Wanda Maximoff and Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler, from her own dimension. Not much has been revealed about her history, but apparently her parents remained active members of the Avengers and X-Men in her reality. Having no other place to go, Nocturne joined a short-lived incarnation of Excalibur. Nocturne mostly interacted with her teammates or Nightcrawler, but with exception of her aunt Polaris, she did not meet the 616 versions of her mother’s side of the family.
A Whole Nu-World
Currently Polaris is the only living child of Magneto's to not have a family of her own. This is apparently set to change in the future. In what was once a possible future timeline of Earth-616, set 500 hundred years in the future, Magneto’s line managed to continue through Polaris to a girl named Cindy. Cindy codenamed Psionics has the ability to move matter with her mind. Along with her reformed supervillian father Lightwave, a native of the planet Zenn-La, she joined a group called the New Defenders. The New Defenders was a virtual conscription service of all of Earth Superhumans. Their plan was to kill Galactus and use the energy contained in his body to transport the entire population of their dying Earth back in time to the present day. They almost succeeded but instead of transporting their people to earth they were relocated to the the Nu-World, an artificial replica of Earth created in the present day. Now living in the past Lightwave and Psionics founded a new version of the Fantastic Force with four other surviving heroes from their time period.
Despite fleeing into the past, their future followed them. Driven mad by having her “children” taken from her, the spirit of Earth, Gaea followed the Fantastic Force back in time to the Nu-World to force her “children” to come home. To aid her in her mission she formed the Hysteries. She plucked four of the most powerful women in history out of time at their most psychotic moment, including Polaris. Although the Fantastic Force managed to send all these women back to their correct moment in history it was not before Polaris revealed that Psionics was her descendant and that her ability to move things with mind, particularly metal comes from her. Psionics didn’t seem to be aware or even fazed by the revelation of her relation to Polaris. [Fantastic Force #1-3]
Sometime later, the Nu-World came under threat from a black hole. Cindy along with the majority of the Fantastic Force seized control of the artificial world turning it into a fascist police state. Due to their proximity to the black hole, time on the Nu-World moved faster and it eight years passed before someone from Earth visited the Nu-World. It’s unclear whether it was power or desperation but Cindy appeared to go mad during this time. When the Nu-World was visited by the Thing, the Human Torch and Franklin and Valeria Richards, Cindy spear headed the plan to capture Valeria and force her to create a device to transport the entire population of the Nu-World to Earth. Their plan was thwarted by the combined efforts of Johnny Storm, the Thing and Ted Castle and during a melee Cindy was killed by her former teammate Bruce Banner Jnr. Cindy’s father Lightwave was on the Nu-World as it entered the Black Hole, his fate is unknown. [Fantastic Four #573]