#like I saw someone say that Tom threw a fit when Shiv went after the CEO job herself

[nightshadehoney]

The “Tom is a gold digger/status chaser and never really loved Shiv” take drives me up the wall. 

Firstly because it’s often trotted out as an excuse for Shiv’s poor treatment of him. Like even if that was 100% true (I don’t think it is), it still wouldn’t justify treating him the way she treats him. Willa wouldn’t be with Con if he didn’t bankroll her lifestyle; their relationship started because she was an actual prostitute who he paid to be around him. Yet I somehow doubt that most of the people who say this about Tom would also say that Willa deserved it if we saw Con cheating on her and belittling her in public and pressuring her into sex acts she didn’t want. 

But more the point, you kind of have to be watching the show with your eyes closed if you think Tom doesn’t love Shiv. You think someone only after money would’ve initially refused to read the the pre-nup before signing it? That someone who only cared about getting ahead would be constantly reeled back in after personal and professional mistreatment with “I love you”s and “I need you”s? If Tom was in this relationship purely for career reasons, he probably would’ve agreed with Shiv on their wedding night when she said the business part of the relationship made sense and wouldn’t have cared about having an open relationship. He was absolutely gutted that she cheated on him and called the idea of being married to him a “box set death march” because he loved her.

Tom is very much enamored with the power and prestige of the Roy family; he loves being rich. But those aren’t separate things from loving Shiv, I think it’s really part of it for him. People being into a someone because that person has what they desire but feel thet lack is pretty common. Shiv isn’t just rich: she’s a Roy and he’s attracted to the kind of power and confidence she has because she is a Roy. He’s so high off the idea that someone like that would want to be with him, that he let’s her walk all over him. A level-headed person would’ve gone running in the other direction after their fiance handed them a pre-nup with no infidelity clause and then implied that they will probably cheat on them and likely already have, but not Tom because Tom is a romantic deep down. He doesn’t want to look at that pre-nup because that would mean he has to acknowledge that there is any transactional part of their relationship. Tom essentially wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to to have a normal marriage where him and his wife love each other and have babies together and he wants to have a successful prestigious career. But openly talking about the latter interferes with his ability to believe he has truly has the former. 

One of the central ideas in Succession as a whole is that when you have as much money as the Roys, there’s no such thing as a relationship that isn’t colored by their wealth. Even Rava, who really seems to have loved Ken in spite of his of him family rather than because of it, apparently did quite well for herself in the divorce.  That scene is Austerlitz where Marcia asks Willa about her plans and tries to give her advice is all about this really highlights this. If you marry into this family you need to look after your position. It’s not a  coincidence that Tom is also part of this discussion. Marcia acts like this is just a normal conversation about whether or not Willa wants children someday, but the subtext of this conversation, (that both Marcia and Tom understand, but maybe Willa doesn’t or is at least uncomfortable with) is “hey if you’re smart, you’ll cement your place in this rich man’s life by having his child as soon as possible, otherwise you are disposable”     

This comes back in season three when Tom and Shiv talk about freezing embryos. That it’s embryos and not eggs is a concession to Tom; it’s Shiv saying “see you have some insurance because I am tying up my reproductive future with yours”. But Shiv is doing such a poor job in disguising how much this is a business discussion that Tom is uncomfortable; normal people talking about having children do not immediately start talking about the scenarios in which they would destroy their frozen embryos. So Tom just sort of flounders is like “I would want you to have my babies if I died” so he can pretend that is at all what they are talking about. It doesn’t make sense for him to act this way if he only cares about his position, very little of his behavior makes sense in this context. The only way it makes any sense is if, again, you are watching the show with your eyes closed and somehow believe that Tom is doing all this to somehow trick Shiv into thinking he’s nice. Shiv doesn’t like nice; she is uncomfortable with emotion and open affection--that Tom acts this way annoys her and makes her respect him less.  

Shiv was never going to marry anyone who didn’t care at all about her money and name because it’s nearly impossible for anyone to exist in the family and not care. The only way any of the Roys could ever really have something like that is if they were with someone who was an equally successful billionaire from an equally prestigious family and Shiv would never marry somebody like that.  Logan’s assessment of Shiv that she was marrying Tom because he was beneath her and she didn’t want to risk being betrayed, while cruel, is accurate. He’s a trophy husband--he’s “plausible” as Caroline puts it--plausibly successful that they would be together but unambiguously beneath her because he doesn’t come from the same kind of money she does and relies on her for his career advancement.  People act as if poor Shiv was duped into marrying someone who only cared about her money like...she’s not blind. She’s not unaware of Tom’s naked ambition and social climbing--she knows who he is and uses it to her advantage.  She sought out a relationship that is transactional in this way because that puts her in control. She would never feel safe marrying someone who wasn’t in a subordinate position to her; it would make her too vulnerable. Frankly, anybody who wasn’t enamored by her lifestyle wouldn’t put up with her shit. She married Tom because he’s safe--he won’t really push back on her treatment of him both because he’s a a huge simp and because he would jeopardize his career by leaving. She conducts her relationships the way her father does, using wealth and status in the company as a form control in her personal relationships.