#if connor and kendall figured it out roman knew haha

[pynkhues]

Hey sophie I hope you're doing great! I keep thinking about the last two episodes of succession and what they tell us about the siblings dynamic. One thing I wonder about is how exactly shiv's experience with and trauma from her parents differs from her brothers, particularly kendall and roman. While logan seems to be alot less verbally and physically abusive towards her, I actually think that caroline treated her worse than the boys. I also think that the absence of a mother figure after her parents divorce messed her up more than kendall and roman because she didn't really seem to have any female role model around to look up to and guide her. She just seems so isolated right now, especially with no one checking after her, after kendall humiliated her like that. Neither roman nor conor seem to notice how badly that sabotage affected her, which makes me wonder how well they actually know her. I would really like to hear your take on what exactly differentiates shiv's trauma and experience from the boys, because I see alot of people thinking she didn't have it as bad as them. Sorry for the wordy ask😅, this new season is seriously messing me up. Thank you in advance and have a great week!

Hi! I’m doing pretty well, anon, thank you! And you don’t have anything to apologise for at all, I love your ask! It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot too lately, because you’re right – I think the show’s always been pretty clear in the fact that Logan treats Shiv differently to how he treats the boys, but they’re really doubling down on it this season, for better and for worse. He’s softer on her, yes, but also in many ways uses her more. It’s like Kendall told her in 3.02 – girls are worth double – and Logan knows that too, using her as both a weapon and a shield in a way that he doesn’t really use the boys (one really clear exception though I’d say is the way he used Kendall not in the s2 finale, but rather when they were sitting before Congress in 2.09).

We saw that over and over again in season 2, most notably in the way he held her hand when meeting the Pierce’s and again in front of the press when the cruise scandal broke, and, of course, in coercing the victim in DC. This season’s doubled down on that – she was the one he needed most on side after Kendall’s defection, and he took her not greeting him with a hug at the press op when he came back and her delegating the soft magazine interview to Roman as a personal slight. He basically says it explicitly in 3.03 – “My daughter. My only daughter.”

It’s interesting, I said in this ask that I think Logan genuinely does like Shiv the most of his four children, and I do stand by that. In a lot of ways, I think that the Kendall letter showed that they’re the most alike in temper and personality, and I suspect Rose’s death may give Shiv an extra special place in his heart too, but I think the only value he truly sees in her professionally is her gender. Even the access she grants him politically is something he tends to steamroll or ignore.

But that favouritism I think is something that’s coloured the Roy kids’ childhood. Logan’s style of parenting has always been divide and conquer, and I could talk a lot about the way presenting as a united front is so important to Logan even as he deliberately stokes the competition between the four of them in private, but that feels like a whole other post, haha. I think separating Shiv out as the only girl effectively meant that the boys club world that Logan navigated outside of the home was something he brought home, positioning Shiv as an outsider to her brothers.

But then, he did that to all of them in some way. Connor was always going to be othered because of his age and having a different mother, Roman was sent away to school in Tennessee while Kendall and Shiv grew up in Manhattan, and Kendall was separated from his siblings first as heir, then as black sheep and finally as traitor. What’s fascinating to me is that they all end up in these iterations where if they actually talked to each other, they’d have a lot of points of connection – Logan sent Roman to Tennessee and Kendall to Shanghai! Shiv and Kendall are both washed up heirs! Roman and Shiv both apparently want to marry the first stable people in their lives! But Logan keeps them all in such a state of flux and competition, it’s a line none of them can really cross.

I think Logan’s favouritism though, and the fact that she was protected from experiencing the more obvious abuse, probably did a lot of work to separate her from her brothers and build lines of guilt and resentment between them too, even beyond the boys club mentality. What that looked like growing up is anyone’s guess, but it does seem to have manifested in this inherent distrust and bitterness, and - - mmm, I can’t quite think of the right word, but I’d say a type of undermining of Shiv’s ideas and strategies. She’s daddy’s precious little girl, right? So Logan’s always going to give her a gold star in one form or another.

I agree too that Caroline seems harsher on Shiv than on the boys. She’s directly antagonistic of Shiv in a way she isn’t with Kendall and Roman (although I do think the cruellest thing she’s done on the show is leave after Kendall tried to talk to her). It makes me think of how some women can see their daughters as competition, and I think it’s something that probably wasn’t helped either by the way Logan dotes on Shiv. After all, if you’re in the midst of a hairy divorce, seeing your only daughter coddled by the father she’ll choose over you has got to sting.

It sort of feeds into the idea as well I think that Logan’s a powerful man operating in a man’s world, and that was the environment that he fostered at home too. He had three little princes who weren’t good enough, and a little princess who wasn’t ever meant for competition in the first place, so was simultaneously an accessory to her father’s power, and hungry for her own. It creates this sort of sense I think that Shiv desperately needs male validation because it was simply never on the table for her. Prior to season 2, she never got to fail in the way her brothers did, because she was never allowed to believe the opportunity was something that could be hers.

Her trauma’s not any less than her brothers’, it’s just a really different shape. Something tied intrinsically to something outside of her control, which instead leaves her desperate to be in control. It’s why she doesn’t want to work for anyone else, why she doesn’t want to do Logan’s years long training plan. She thinks her brothers have grown up on a path that she’s only just been allowed to start on, and she doesn’t want to be striving to catch up, she just wants to be ahead of them. Wants to be where they’re at already, prove that she’s the same – not the same, better (anything less would be a humiliation) – and she might be, but the thing is without that work, without that path, no one’s ever going to see her as anything more than daddy’s little princess playing dress up in his crown.

It’s the paradox of her unique experience within their family, and it’s one she can’t set aside her pride to unpick.

As for Connor and Roman not checking on her, to be honest, I think they did know just how humiliating it was for her. They know exactly how proud she is, but Connor wasn’t there, and even if he was – they’re not a family that checks in on each other. None of them went after Kendall after their dad viscerally tore shreds off him at Shiv’s wedding reception, Kendall intervened when Logan hit Roman, but it didn’t seem like any of them checked on Roman later, and none of them seemed to check in on Connor after the complete disaster at his ranch. It’s a part of the divide and conquer environment Logan’s created for them – showing vulnerability is a sign of weakness, and as a result, the only way any of them know how to acknowledge vulnerability is to weaponise it.