"Your broad chest! Your powerful arms!
Your huge staff!"
Your huge staff!"
"If we hadn't married Muggles we'd've died out."
— Ron Weasley, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
A romance, sexual or otherwise, between a Muggle and a magic user.
The Muggle doesn't necessarily have to know about it. If they do, reactions can vary from Understanding Boyfriend to Fantastic Racism.
This kind of romance can be portrayed any number of ways in media. If it is normal for one half of a couple to just have magic and the other to not, it signals to viewers that the setting is Mundane Fantastic. If society loathes this kind of romance, it can lead to Star-Crossed Lovers while signalling to viewers that there is Fantastic Racism in the setting.
The couple may also have to deal with issues that may arise where one half of the couple is just that much more powerful. If the Muggle is rather tolerant and understanding though, and both the Muggle and the magic user work at it if necessary, the issue can be smoothed over. If the muggle assumes a de facto submissive position in the relationship due to the power imbalance, expect overlap with Muggle in Mage Custody. If the power balance issue cannot be resolved adequately, it can lead to an end in the relationship. If the inequality between the Muggle and the magic user serves as a "turn-on", with the latter habitually telling the former something like "If you upset me, I will put a curse on you", the trope overlaps with Power Dynamics Kink.
Factors that affect how the society views this sort of romance depend on the nature of magical society, mundane society, any sort of Masquerade, how magic is acquired (learned vs. inherent gift), other intrinsic differences between muggles and mages, etc.
Do note that since it is often played the same way, romances between superheroes who are not Badass Normals and ordinary people, Badass Normal or not, can also fall under this trope.
The muggle partner is very likely to become a Muggle with a Degree in Magic.
If the couple become a Battle Couple, expect them to be a Sword and Sorcerer.
If a relationship of this sort exists within the setting, odds are that there may be an aesop about tolerance.
The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life can negatively impact on this kind of romance. If the Mage also has a longer lifespan, it may also result in a Mayfly–December Romance.
It is the Super-Trope to Magical Girlfriend & Muggle and Magical Love Triangle, and a Sister Trope to Boy Meets Ghoul.
See also Interspecies Romance, where there is a lot of overlap in terms of themes and portrayals.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Raki, an ordinary human, and Claire, a warrior with Yoma-related powers, are heavily implied to have become an Official Couple at the end of Claymore.
- Shuro, a muggle, from Delicious in Dungeon is in love with Falin, a cleric. It's unknown yet whether she returned his feelings or not.
- Louise and Saito from The Familiar of Zero, a summoner and a normal person respectively, have this sort of relationship, and eventually get married.
- In Karin, Karin, a vampire, and Kenta, an ordinary human, develop a relationship over the course of the manga. Then becomes subverted (kinda); Karin is actually the embodiment of a vampiric fertility figure known as the Psyche, which was passed down one of her family lines before marrying into the current one. This allows her to go into the light no problem and over time, becomes more like a human than a vampire, while also making her vulnerable to vampires who want to rejuvenate their fertility. The manga's ending has her family erase their memories of them from her so she could live a normal and safe life with Kenta. Kenta is the only one who knows this outside the family and is understandably quite heartbroken over the ordeal.
- Kiki's Delivery Service has Kiki's parents (her mom is a witch and her dad isn't). Kiki and Tombo have some romantic tension, although it doesn't resolve into anything definite. Witch/muggle relationships are kind of inevitable since witches are a One-Gender Race.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Phantom Blood: Hamon-user Jonathan Joestar and his Love Interest Erina Pendleton. Jonathan kept her Locked Out of the Loop about Hamon and vampires in hopes of protecting her, and she only finds out when Dio attacks the pair on their honeymoon.
- Battle Tendency: Joseph Joestar, a hamon-user, and normal human Suzi Q. Her work as Lisa Lisa's maid means she's more aware about Hamon. It's later revealed that Joseph's parents were this, with his mother Elizabeth "Lisa Lisa" as the mage and his father George II as the muggle before his death.
- Stone Ocean: Deconstructed with Stand-user Jotaro Kujo and his wife. Jotaro's kept his wife and daughter Jolyne out of the loop of Stands so they wouldn't get attacked by his enemies. However, his constant absence, especially in the life of his daughter, without a proper explanation frustrated his wife. This ultimately leads to the two divorcing prior to the events of Part 6, which only further Jolyne's resentment towards her father.
- There are several examples of this in Lyrical Nanoha including Chrono/Amy and Quint/Genya. It's presumably a common occurrence on Midchilda.
- Haku from Naruto is the result of one of these. Due to the infamous wars of the "Bloody Mist," people with "Kekkai Genkai" (Bloodline limits, as in people with inherited abilities as supposed to just secret techniques) were feared. Haku inherited his kekkai genkai of Hyotan (Ice release, combining water and wind chakra to make ice) from his mother. Despite her best efforts, the father, one of the people discriminating against those with Kekkai Genkai, found out and he ended up snapping, killing his wife and would've killed Haku if not him activating his powers to protect himself.
- With several Love Interests to choose from, most of whom are Muggles, this seems inevitable for the lead of Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Negi Springfield. The sequel UQ Holder! reveals in one timeline he chose Chisame, who is one of the least magically inclined girls in the cast.
- It's stated in chapter 65 of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid that Shouta's mother has no magical knowledge whatsoever (in contrast to his father). This was the main reason why she couldn't accompany him to his mage exam, since she wouldn't be able to get past the CAPTCHA.
- An important element in Ojamajo Doremi, out of the main group of witches both Doremi and Hazuki have long-term romantic relationships with "muggle" boys (Kotake and Yada, respectively) and some of the other witches also develop sporadic crushes on "muggle" boys. Lore-wise, this type of romance is the exact reason why the former witch queen created the magical frog curse since the pain of losing her human husband and children was too great to bear and she wished to keep other witches from feeling it.
- In A Witch's Love at the End of the World it's revealed that Mari's mother fell in love with a human man, causing her to lose her ability to use magic. She was actually content to live as a human, until Mari's magic manifested and drew the attention of the other witches.
Comic Books
- Aquaman is, save for a post-Crisis period up until Blackest Night, the offspring of the human Tom Curry and Atlantean queen Atlanna.
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
- Sabrina is the result of a relationship between a wizard and a muggle woman. She's an oddity amongst witches as a result.
- Sabrina has had human love interests, most prominently Harvey.
- Peter Parker, the Spider-Man, also has the ordinary Mary Jane Watson as a Love Interest.
- The titular character of Superman has the Intrepid Reporter Lois Lane, who is otherwise ordinary, as a Love Interest.
Fan Works
- True to its Harry Potter roots, Child of the Storm has this fairly frequently.
- In The Flower Princess and the Alchemist, Orihime's and Edward's relationship could be considered a variation of this. Apart from his alchemic prowess, he is nothing more than an ordinary human, and she, while also human, is essentially a Reality Warping spiritualist who can see ghosts and hunts Hollows. Because of this, he remains very much Locked Out of the Loop of her... spiritual activities. The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life comes into play when Orihime has to balance her newfound romance with Ed while keeping her Hollow hunting a secret.
- Quite common in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines. Partly this is due to bloodliners being more predominantly female, which gives them rather limited options in the romance department. One of them is taking a chance with a non-bloodliner boy and hope that he doesn't fall into Fantastic Racism.
- A bit of a twist in Spellbound (Lilafly): Adrien is half-fae, while Marinette is merely a human with slightly enhanced sensitivity to magic, and he keeps her ignorant of the fae to avoid retaliation. However, because she uses a Miraculous, The Fair Folk assume that Marinette is their goddess Danu, putting a spotlight on her. He has to juggle convincing them that Chat Noir really is the god of destruction, keeping them from asking Ladybug the wrong questions (and working out that she has no idea about them), persuading Ladybug not to keep prying into the nature of "the Court" while he's Chat Noir, and addressing Marinette's growing concern about how stressed out he is when he's Adrien.
- The Stand Still, Stay Silent fandom's favorite non-canon pairing happens to be made out of a Flat-Earth Atheist and a mage who isn't the type to use his powers just for the sake of proving him wrong, making this trope show up in quite a few stories. The existence of magic is far from being hidden in the setting, but there are a couple entire nations outright refusing to believe it exists while it's taken for granted in the three others.
Films — Live-Action
- In the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, such relationships are outright banned in America, due to a small anti-magical faction "in the know" among Muggles. That doesn't stop a blooming romance between Jacob Kowalski, an ordinary Muggle baker, and Queenie Goldstein, a witch. They end up becoming Star-Crossed Lovers due to magical society's laws requiring Jacob's memories be erased. It gets even worse in the sequel when Queenie joins forces with Grindelwald, creating a potentially permanent rift with Jacob. In the third film, they finally get married in the end, in a small ceremony.
- Star Wars:
- The classic example is the romance between the muggle-esque smuggler and scoundrel Han Solo and the Force-sensitive and Jedi-trained Princess Leia.
- The prequels depict the romance between Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, whose lack of Force powers makes her the equivalent of a Muggle. It ends in tragedy.
- Star Wars Legends played it a bit more positively in several cases. Leia was trained as a Jedi later on, making her the mage to Han's muggle, and while they underwent some pretty difficult ordeals, they worked out far better here than in the Disney continuity. Their daughter in Legends, Jaina, was also a mage who married Jag, the muggle son of Baron Fel, eventually becoming Empress of the reformed Empire. There was also Kyle Katarn (mage) and Jan Ors (muggle), as well as Corran (mage) and Mirax (muggle) Horn.
Literature
- The Belgariad: Polgara is a sorceress who is over three thousand years old. She falls in love with Durnik, the thirty-something blacksmith of a farm she hides out on with the prophesied savior of the world. When it comes to the crunch, the gods themselves question the wisdom of such an imbalance of power in a relationship, and ask if Polgara can limit herself to Durnik's level for the sake of love. She consents without hesitation, expecting to be transformed into a normal person like Durnik. Having forgotten that even gods cannot unmake that which exists and therefore cannot take away her power, she is caught off-guard by their decision to instead transform Durnik into a sorcerer whose power equals her own.
- In Bras and Broomsticks, Rachel, a witch, has a human boyfriend named Raf. He turns out to be an Understanding Boyfriend after being told about it.
- The Burning Kingdoms: Priya has magic, and falls for muggle princess Malini, with their relationship getting focused on heavily.
- The Chronicles of Dorsa: Tasia and Joslyn remain a couple in the third book, when it's revealed Tasia's been taught magic that she's very adept with. Joslyn still relies only on her skil with a sword.
- In A Discovery of Witches, there are several examples: Verin, a vampire, and her human husband Ernst; Marcus, a vampire, and Phoebe, a human until she decides to become a vampire; and Stephen Proctor's father, a wizard, and his mother, a human. Matthew has had several human girlfriends, and Hamish, a daemon and his human lover William.
- Many examples in Discworld:
- Carrot, an ordinary human, has a Will They or Won't They? version of this with Angua, a werewolf. Sally, a vampire, also showed interest before backing off due to not wanting to get into a fight with Angua.
- Not uncommon among witches: Magrat Garlick marries the muggle King of Lancre, while Nanny Ogg has outlived three husbands, dated vastly more, and raised a sprawling extended family.
- Wizards are contractually required to avoid this, since they have a small chance of fathering the living embodiment of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. There's mention of retired wizards pursuing romance, albeit quite carefully. However, the only one we get any real details about isn't an example: Dr Earwig's wife Lettice is a witch.
- Dragonvarld: Melisande, who's trained in using magic against dragons and a seer, is lovers with Bellona, a muggle warrior woman. Relationships are encourages between priestesses (who are also magic users) and the warrior women at the monastery. It turns out this is to further bind them into service by Maristara, as they're thus more attached to living there in the monastery together through having lovers.
- Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files stories was born of this sort of relationship, with his mother, a very powerful witch with a number of dark associations falling in love with a poor travelling magician, before dying in childbirth and not naturally, either. It's repeatedly noted that her husband wasn't powerful in any way, but that he was a good man. Dresden himself follows his mother with a (ultimately tragic) relationship with tabloid reporter Susan Rodriguez, and has had a star-crossed will-they-or-won't-they with Karrin Murphy for some time.
- In Harry Potter, it is reasonably common for Witches and Wizards to marry Muggles. The resulting children tend to be called Half-Bloods. The Big Bad is the result of one particularly disastrous example that involved a Love Potion. Wizard "blood purists" loathe such unions and people born of them, along with muggle-borns, whom they call "mudbloods". However, even aside from the disdainful prejudice of all this, as Ron Weasley pointed out in the page quote, if wizards hadn't done this they'd have died out due to inbreeding (we're shown that all existing "pure blood" families are interrelated, with many more extinct).
- In Magic for Liars non-magic Ivy meets mage Rahul under the impression that she is also a mage. After several dates he discovers her lie and feels betrayed to his core. Whether they reconcile is left as an exercise for the reader.
- Of Fire and Stars: Mare has no magic, while Dennaleia struggles with her emerging ability. When she tells Mare (whose country bans magic), she accepts Dennaleia and keeps it their secret. However, even as the pair's relationship grows, Dennaleia's struggles to control her magic drive them apart for some time.
- The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
- Subverted with Simon and Isabelle from The Mortal Instruments. While Ship Tease between them is present since the first book, they only start to pursue each other after Simon becomes a vampire.
- The Infernal Devices has Sophie, a mundane, and Gideon, a Shadowhunter. That is, until she undergoes Ascension to become a Shadowhunter herself. Meanwhile, Will mentions that he was raised in a mundane household, because his father, Edmund, was a Shadowhunter who chose to strip his Marks after he fell in love with a mundane.
- According to The Shadowhunter Codex, the Clave used to legalize marriage between Shadowhunters and mundanes (since Shadowhunter genes are dominant, the children will turn up Shadowhunter anyway). As the Shadowhunters secluded themselves, however, the rule was tightened until it is no longer possible for a member of such pairing to stay true to his roots. Either the mundane undergoes Ascension (Sophie), the Shadowhunter strips his Marks (Edmund), or they break up.
- Shatter the Sky: Maren's relationship with Kaia is turned into this as she has clairvoyant ability that Kaia's shown to lack. She later breaks up with Kaia and sees Sev, who also lacks magic.
- So This is Ever After: Arek, who can't do magic, and Matt (a mage) marry at the end.
- Third Time Lucky and Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: Magdelene has been with many men over the centuries. So far as we see, none could do magic, unlike her.
- In The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Princess Addie develops a crush on her father's new court sorcerer, Rhys. Rhys is friendly and helpful to her (especially after she makes the decision to set out on a quest for the cure) and does things that make her wonder whether the attraction might be reciprocated. It is, and they marry at the end of the book. In this case, it doubles as Interspecies Romance, because sorcerers are a different sort of being from humans.
Live-Action TV
- Bewitched is a sitcom about a muggle-mage marriage between Darrin and Samantha, respectively. It's complicated by Sam's family being a long-lived Mage Species with a general Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers! attitude to modern society, Darrin's difficulties with his superpowered Obnoxious In-Laws, and Darrin himself being a stolid type who Does Not Like Magic and treats his devoted wife's powers as an inconvenience.
- Charmed, the main characters are witches who have many relationships with ordinary men. They aren't always successful, but Paige and Henry are doing fine, although the comic book continuation shows them going through a rough patch.
- Dharma & Greg often feels like this, although it's only between a dedicated hippie and a conservative lawyer.
- In Ghost Whisperer, Melinda can see ghosts, while Jim has no known power whatsoever. They're happily married.
- In H₂O: Just Add Water, the main characters are mermaids and over the course of the show, they had relationships with ordinary men. This has caused problems, but one of them at least was a trusted Secret-Keeper who was very helpful to them.
- Comedy series I Dream of Jeannie runs in a vein similar to that of Bewitched: Major Nelson is a normal human American astronaut who encountered an ornate bottle upon returning to Earth. The bottle contains the lovely Jeannie, a Sealed Good in a Can genie, who once loose, becomes smitten with Major Nelson, whom she calls "Master." Though Nelson appreciates Jeannie and all she can do, his position necessitates maintaining the Masquerade that Jeannie is a normal fiancée, which gets complicated by her unfamiliarity with modern devices and social customs, as well as being a Clingy Jealous Girl.
- In Medium, Allison, the titular medium, is married to a normal man named Joe.
- Motherland: Fort Salem: Raelle's parents (a witch and a civilian) had one, with her as the result. Marriages between them are stigmatized by most witches, as they believe it results in weaker witch children.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Kawlan Roken is a member of the Path, a group that helps fugitive Jedi escape from the Inquisitors. He fell in love with and married a Jedi woman who decided to forgo using the Force in order to escape detection. Unfortunately, the Inquisitors found and killed her anyway.
- Harvey and Sabrina have this type of relationship in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. At one point, he leaves her, but that was because he learned she was using magic to mess with his life for years. To Harvey, Sabrina being a witch is not by itself a dealbreaker. Sabrina herself is the result of a union between a warlock and an ordinary woman.
- Wizards of Waverly Place: Because it is illegal for wizards to marry non-wizards, Jerry gave up his powers to be with Theresa.
Tabletop Games
- Discouraged in Warhammer 40,000, as the Navigator gene essential for Faster-Than-Light Travel can only be found in the offspring of two-Navigator pairings.
Theatre
- In The Twelve Months, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the month of April is deeply in love with a human girl (No Name Given), who starts to reciprocate his feelings soon after meeting him in person. He gives her an engagement ring and they are eager to stay in touch, but the future of their relationship is left deliberately vague. The rest of the Months, at least, are shown to approve of the engagement.
Video Games
- Dragon Age has this as a relatively common scenario. Mage-muggle romances are actually quite common in the series, despite a heavy social stigma on dallying with mages (magic is viewed as evil by the dominant religious groups and children of mages are more likely to develop magical abilities themselves), but most end in some form of tragedy.
- A mage PC (Warden, Hawke, or Inquisitor) in any of the games can invoke this by romancing a non-mage love interest. A male non-mage Warden can invoke it by romancing Morrigan, the only potential LI who is a mage. A non-mage Hawke can invoke it by romancing either Anders or Merrill, the party's mages, and a non-mage Inquisitor can invoke it by romancing either Dorian (if he's a gay male) or Solas (if she's an elven female).
- In Dragon Age: Origins, Wynne (a mage) confides to Alistair that she had a son who was fathered by a muggle Templar. Like most children of mages in that situation, he was taken from her at birth. The tie-in novel Asunder introduces that son, Rhys, and he and his mother struggle to form a connection after they are reunited. Rhys himself also has a relationship of this sort with the Templar Evangeline; they can appear in Inquisition in a war table operation which indicates that they are still together.
- Alistair himself is the product of such a union, but he doesn't know it. He thinks his parents are the late King Maric and "a star-struck maid." He's half right, but his real mother is actually Fiona, the Grand Enchanter of the Circle of Magi. She's a mage, an elf, and a Grey Warden.
- In Dragon Age II, Hawke is the eldest child of Leandra Amell, a muggle, and Malcolm Hawke, a renegade mage, who eloped with her to Ferelden. Theirs is one of the more cheerful examples of the trope; Malcolm died of natural causes after raising three kids with Leandra, and the marriage was generally happy.
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition, if the player romances neither Dorian nor the Iron Bull but has them in the party together long enough to trigger the necessary banter, they will get together and form one of these.
- The tie-in background comics which introduce Maevaris Tilani show that her engagement to Thorold Tethras, Varric's cousin, was this along with being an Interspecies Romance. She is a very powerful mage, while he was a dwarf, which is an entire race of muggles. It was nevertheless a very happy relationship until his death.
- In several Harvest Moon games, such as Harvest Moon DS and Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, the normal human farmer protagonist can woo and marry a witch or wizard.
- Zig-Zagging Trope with the Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Old Republic series:
- Male Revan and Bastila are a mage couple and the "canon" option. Female Revan and Juhani are also a mage couple. A female Revan romancing Carth plays this mostly straight, though it's heavily implied that Carth isn't as much of a muggle as he'd like to think.
- Subverted with Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Male or female, all of the potential love interests of the Jedi Exile turn out to be Force Sensitive and trainable as "mages."
- Star Wars: The Old Republic has several playable examples; Female Jedi Knight and Doc, Female Jedi Consular and Felix Iresso (with an Optional Sexual Encounter possible with Tharan Cedrax), Male Sith Warrior and Vette, Female Sith Warrior and Malavai Quinn (Quinn also provides some Deconstruction as he can quote statistics on the short lifespans of Sith's muggle lovers), and Female Sith Inquisitor and Andronikos Revel. A Jedi or Sith Alliance Commander can also hook up with a variety of muggle companions, and a non-Force-sensitive Commander can romance Lana Beniko, a Sith Lord. There are also two prominent examples in the backstory; Darth Malgus and Eleena Daru (a very dark example as she was technically his Sex Slave but he treated her as a common law wife) and Satele Shan's relationship with Jace Malcolm.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive had, at least for a while, Elliot and Sarah in a relationship. Sarah had no magic, while Elliot can shapeshift and uses martial arts styled after anime and manga.
- In The Order of the Stick, the Insufferable Genius wizard Vaarsuvius is married to Inkyrius the baker, though the relationship suffers from Vaarsuvius being much more invested in their pursuit of arcane power than in their spouse. Ultimately
, Inkyrius files for divorce.
Western Animation
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel, The Legend of Korra, there are a lot of romances between benders and non-benders:
- In the original series, there's Zuko and Mai on the main cast.
- In the sequel, there's Tenzin and Pema, Mako and Asami, Suyin and Bataar Sr, and as of the finale Korra and Asami.
- In Ben 10, Grandpa Max's wife is a magical alien named Verdona. This is where Gwen got her magical talent.
- In season 3 of The Dragon Prince Human mage Callum and Elven assassin Rayla, develop a Interspecies Romance after they both realize how much they truly admire the others bravery and selflessness.
- Downplayed in The Owl House with Luz and Amity since Luz is a Muggle with a Degree in Magic and (as of the end of season 1) oblivious to Amity's feelings. Though following "Escaping Expulsion", the two now appear to have mutual feelings for each other, and eventually became an Official Couple following "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door".
- In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, near the end of Season 4, Star, a magical mewman princess from another dimension, and Marco a Badass Normal human boy from Earth, end up in a relationship after sharing The Big Damn Kiss.
