#i do think it's probably four years between shiv and kendall

[pynkhues]

literally sooo fascinated by logan and caroline's marriage tbh. give us all your thoughts!! (if you want ahah)

Oh, man, I could talk about them all day, haha. I kinda feel like people can sometimes rob both Caroline and Logan of any nuance, because yeah, sure, they’re often the central antagonists of the series, and their abuse and neglect of their children permeates the series, but the show’s always also been careful to show that the cycle of violence never started with Logan, and Harriet Walter’s talked in interviews too about the cycle of neglect not starting with Caroline either. They’re victims and perpetrators in the same way that Kendall, Roman and Shiv are victims and perpetrators, and the fact that neither of them were able to break that cycle is the exact sort of tragedy that's at the broken heart of this series.

It makes it really fascinating to me in that sense that Caroline and Logan found each other at all, and I think really slots into what we know about his three marriages – namely, that he marries women who are in some ways as damaged by life’s cruelties as he is. We understand that explicitly with Marcia, who pretty much says out loud that their connection has been born out of the fact that they’re both survivors, but I think it’s implied in his relationships with both Caroline and Connor’s mother too. At least Marcia and Connor’s mother became somethink like partners for a while too – Marcia was a co-conspirator with Logan for the bulk of season 1, and the RECNY Ball episode I think also showed that Connor’s mother, for at least a while, was the sort of socialite who could lubricate and work politicians alongside Logan.

We don’t really know what role Caroline played in that sense, but she’s obviously intelligent and savvy enough to have worked to secure the kids real power in the divorce, something we see her give back to Logan in 3.09. We also know that her title gave Logan the class elevation that he wanted (even if its one he also seems to bitterly resent), and that his money gave her security, and in a lot of ways, that’s a strategic match that sees them both step forwards in power together.

I was actually listening to an old episode of Vanity Fair’s Succession podcast recently where they interviewed Dame Harriet Walter, and she talks quite a lot about Caroline’s backstory.

She says that Caroline was born into a neglectful aristocratic family, an only daughter who due to the social structures of British aristocracy, wouldn’t have inherited her father’s estate as a result of her gender. Instead, his estate would’ve gone to a distant male cousin, which ties into what Connor says in 1.09 to Willa about the house being the ancestral home Caroline didn't inherit.

She was disregarded by her family but encouraged to marry rich, and she sees Caroline as having gone through a bit of a wild child phase, that she partied, used drugs, tried to escape herself. That she was probably featured frequently in the social columns ‘in disgrace’, and then married young to a rich British man who bored her. She sees Caroline as having escaped to New York on a trip, and met Logan who dazzled her. Who was the opposite of the men she’d grown up with, the men who’d cut her out of her own inheritance, and that he was exciting and creating something and married too, and that they likely left their spouses for each other. That he married for a title, but he also married her because he found her fun and funny and different from the other women of her class and station.

I actually love that backstory a lot, and in particular I think it feeds into the themes of cycles on this show, both with Shiv, but also in Caroline being cut out by her own family, and then cut out by the one she tried to make for herself, and the damage that likely caused her. It also I think really beautifully depicts this idea of legacy and succession which is so crucial to the show – that Logan can spend a childhood brutalised by a man who’d give him just enough to build an empire on and that Caroline can spend a childhood in luxurious neglect with parents who will leave her with nothing.

What that meant for their relationship - - I think they did love each other, as much as they could love anyone, and I think that vulnerability between them was something that probably allowed them as true an intimacy as they’d ever have for a while. I also think that that vulnerability and that intimacy gave them power over one another that they’d use often and likely cruelly, and that the final years of their marriage were probably torturous for both of them.

After all, at the end of the day, Logan had the wealth Caroline could marry but never inherit, and Caroline had the title Logan could marry but never inherit, and what is that if not a reminder of the poisoned soil they sprung from?

#i am literally obsessed with them #in the 1980s spinoff in my head they are despicable to one another and i adore them #interestingly too harriet walter says that they were married for 15 years #which is an interesting indication in terms of the kids' age gap too #with the insane timeline that exists in my head haha #i do think it's probably four years between shiv and kendall #and roman and shiv are either twins or he's a year older than her / three years younger than kendall #which works with shiv being 11 when caroline left + the 15 year marriage #anyway haha #caroline collingwood #logan roy #caroline x logan #hbo succession #succession meta #welcome to my ama #always thinking about Them atm

[sevenswansmp3]

tagged by @hauntedwoman to talk about 5 things i’m obsessed with <33333 thank you!!!

1. succession surprise, surprise. i’ve finally gotten around to starting a full succession rewatch and i’ve been taking notes. first and foremost, one of my missions for this rewatch was to really focus in on shiv as a character because the first time i watched it and then rewatched it, i was a huge tom and kendall girl and honestly really did not like shiv :( but i recognize now that my dislike for her was mostly a result of my own internalized misogyny and also because she is a woman written by men and they really do their best to make her one of the less sympathetic characters in the show. i also think that a big chunk of fans online (esp twitter) are quick to label her an evil woman and, when defending their pov, they tend to bring up her behavior towards tom and kendall while also ignoring how both tom and kendall have treated her. i’m really enjoying this rewatch and have really grown to love shivvy. her relationship with tom also reminds me a lot of macbeth and lady macbeth and i think that their relationships have a lot of parallels and i find it very very interesting!!! i’m hoping to compile enough evidence to write something comprehensible about it. also, ROMAN. i literally did not give a shit about roman until the last few episodes of season four which is crazy but something has come over me. i think it’s his issues with intimacy and refusal to let anyone like actually see him and love him that has really bonded me to him <3 additionally there is something about kieran culkin (and rory…) that has bewitched me this summer. i think it’s kieran’s little fangs. i’m obsessed

2. the enormity of my desire disgusting me <3 welcome to truelovewaitsmp3 on tumblr dot com. this summer, i don’t think i’ve opened my journal without writing about how bad i want someone to love me, to look at the mess of my insides and all of this gross desire and love me anyways. to quote something i said to katy alpacinolover in an email, “I DON’T WANT SOMETHING CASUAL. I WANT TO BE THE PREY IMPALED ON YOUR SHRIKE’S THORN.” there’s something to be said about shame here and probably a million other things but i’ve written it so many times already that i don’t care to repeat it here.

3. ??? (stone fruits) two weeks ago, i bought a carton of nine plums from a local produce market. i had been rotting on the couch all day and decided that if i didn’t get up and put on real clothes and go buy a plum i was going to die. the most erotic experience i’ve ever had was eating a plum over newly washed cream sheets, plum viscera under my nails and between my teeth, wine colored juice dripping down my chin and onto my sheets. when the plums were gone, i found two forgotten nectarines in the fridge. i have been assigned “the love song of j alfred prufrock” for three different classes over the last four years (high school english, western humanities and then british lit in college) and each time, the line “do i dare eat a peach” was said to refer to prufrock’s acid reflux. in my american lit class, my professor brought it up one day and told us that it referred to oral sex. anyways. a nectarine is not a peach but i find the experience just as enjoyable.

4. wasteland, baby (2019) for whatever reason, i’ve always gravitated more towards hozier’s first album. however, over the past two months, i have listened through wasteland, baby an insane amount of times. something about the world ending and having someone there to hold through it. this album is also so incredibly sexy and is home to the horniest and sweetest hozier songs (TALK, be, dinner & diatribes, movement, etc). at the end of the title track, hozier whispers “that’s it” and i lose my mind. nfwmb is an honorary wasteland baby track, to me, and also a song that makes me insane and that i have had on repeat lately. i’m scared and excited to see what unreal unearth is going to do to me.

5. a past that i cannot go back to !!!! my hometown is filled with too many ghosts. summer digs them back up. i drive past her mom’s house and have to see her stupid car. someone else comes into work and i have to be reminded of everything i’ve missed out on. i have written about the same thing so many times i’m afraid that my story is metamorphosing.

hiiii ok i’m tagging @alpacinolover (i know you’ve already been tagged by someone else but i really need you to do this) @motherofvinegar @kenromshiv and anyone else who wants to do it! im tagging u.

[s4pphoiduser]

succession 3x08 chiantishire was such an insane episode in tv history. i keep thinking about that conversation between shiv and caroline: "truth is... i probably should never have had children. some people just aren't made to be mothers. you made the right decision. [...] he never saw anything he loved that he didn't want to kick it just to see if it would still come back." then we see shiv go to tom, the only person who she has any sort of "control" with, and she says she wants to try for children now. and she's telling herself that she's not her mother's daughter and she's not her father's daughter; that she can be a mother if she wants and she doesn't have to kick the people she loves. except she does. she kicks tom, to see if he would still come back, "you want me. you love me. even though i don't love you." and for that moment right there, he seems to still come back--that's good enough for her. we see right the next morning that by "try for children" she meant they could freeze her eggs, maybe for the next ten years. and she says again, "i love you but i don't love you," with a shrug. it's normal, she's just saying it how it is, this is what she knows--i love you but i don't love you. in the end, she's her father's daughter and she's her mother's daughter, maybe she shouldn't have children, and maybe she can't get dogs.

there's also the kendall/logan conversation. "pay up and let me out."/ "maybe i want to keep you close. keep you rattling around." and "you think i want you dead? i'll be broken when you die." and "life's not knights on horseback. it's a fight for a knife in the mud." logan's known only a sort of violence his entire life. it was inflicted upon him, so he inflicts it upon his children, different pieces of it to each of them, all a sort of violence that can only come from a father who wants to love them some of the time but cannot actually do it. he wants to keep them close because it kills him when they side against him ("i'll have the cabonara and daddy, please.") and arm's length with an added pointed edge is the best he can have. and "i'm better than you. you know, i hate to say this because i love you, but you're... you're kind of evil. [...] i don't wanna be you, i'm a good guy." kendall wants to believe he isn't his father's son, but logan throws right at his face: "how long was that kid alive before he started sucking in water? a couple minutes? three, four, five? long time, two minutes." the first thing kendall did when that kid died was run back to logan with a tail between his legs, ready to give up on the war he's just started waging against logan. first it was covering up the cruises matter--until it benefitted him--and now this. "i'm better than you," kendall insists, and logan deadpans, "sure." a beat. "you're my son. [...] and i'm a bad person. fuck off, kiddo." he's saying, you're no better than i am, and maybe that's not completely true, but we all know it is, at least to some extent. in the end, he's still a child when he's in front of logan, he's still logan roy's, resident big bad's, son. he's stunned into a silence, and this conversation is the only thing he can hear in his head the entire rest of the time, because in All The Bells Say, he confesses to shiv and roman about that kid he killed during shiv's wedding.

caroline and shiv's conversation is what led shiv to hurt tom in a way that made him think, "enough of this. i want to feel good. i want power, i want... more./ logan's never lost." and makes him choose logan, the winning side, over shiv, the woman who loves him even though she doesn't love him. and similarly, kendall and logan's conversation took up so much space in kendall's head, more than this accidental manslaughter ever had since it actually happened, that just the sight of waiters sent him over the edge--"i'm blown to pieces. i'm all apart."--and with the confession and that single solitary moment of just silent support for kendall, the siblings put up a united front against logan for the first time ever. this united front that logan can't pry apart with just some words rattles him, so much that he abandoned all logic and sense, mimicking shiv in such a mortifying way that it literally makes her flinch. and in the same scene, shiv finds out which side tom's chosen.

#season 3 was a fucking masterpiece argue with the wall. every single thing that's happened since the start of succession has led up to this #(yes including L to the OG. (i actually like that song.)) #succession #succession hbo #long post #analysis #(kind of) #logan roy #kendall roy #shiv roy #caroline roy #tom wambsgans #if i didn't mention roman it's bc i have a whole separate set of emotions for him that cannot be paralleled with these two scenes in 3x08 #anyway 3x09 Killed me too. 'what have i got? i dont know... fucking... love?' 'you come for me... with Love in your hand?' KILLED ME. #amongst other things #anyway this post long as hell #my long post #joey.com #i actually have class tomorrow (today) in about like. 6 fucking hours. i haven't slept yet im so fucked. #i couldn't even finish this one fic on time for new years and This is what im doing. oh fuck me

[tomwambsmilk]

Okay, I’ve been trying to construct a Succession timeline, and this is what I have so far:

S1E1 takes place at some nebulous time before the holidays, but not too far because Kendall is worried holidays will make it difficult to gather the board

S1E5 takes place on Thanksgiving. So I would wager that the first five episodes take place over the time span of about a month

S1E6 takes place shortly after, I would say a week tops, maybe less, because we see Kendall moving very fast on the vote of no confidence

S1E7 has more space in between it and E6, because it would take time to get those rumours about Kendall rolling. I’d place it somewhere in the new year, maybe late January

We know the wedding is in March, so S1E8 is probably February. Obviously, then the last two wedding episodes happen in March

(Side note - Tom’s email spam to Greg happened on March 12, which means it happened right around the wedding. Idk what to do with that info, I just think it’s neat).

S2E1 happens on Tom and Shiv’s honeymoon, so I’d say probably no more than a week after the wedding. Probably late March.

The next few episodes are tough to place. S2E4 Roman starts the management training program, which lasts six weeks. That means there are 6 weeks between that episode and S2E5, the one at Tern Haven.

The next hard timeline we’re given is S2E9, DC. Karl says there are two and a half weeks until the shareholder meeting (which means, insanely, everything from S2E9-S3E5 happens in the space of two and a half weeks). Additionally, Gil refers to the document boxes being full “in August”; since they were shredded the previous Thanksgiving, this means it’s not yet August, otherwise Gil would have to specify which August to avoid confusion.

So, at the very earliest, the events of the back of season 2 happen late April. Since everyone shows up at Tern Haven wearing jackets, I’m inclined to say that the events of the first four episodes of season happen very quickly, so that Roman’s management training started in early April and ended in mid-May.

The yacht episode, though, I think has to happen in the summer. It’s possible they sailed south, but that seems like a lot of effort for essentially a two-day death cruise.

Another clue is that Connor and Willa move to New York to start staging Willa’s play in S2E2, and are holding previews in S2E8. Typically, plays with actors working full-time take about 6-8 weeks to get on their feet, so we can reasonably assume a 2 month window between those two episodes. There’s also likely not a ton of time between E8 and E9, I’m going to wager that E2 is late March, and E8 is late May. That places the events of S2E9-S3E5 comfortably in June.

So know we reach the last 4 episodes of season 3. These are the hardest to place, bc there are so few context clues. We know episodes 8 and 9 happen over the space of two or three days, and happen in the summer (so likely no later than August, or early in a hot September). But it’s tough to track how much time passes between the shareholder meeting and the political conference in episode 6, or between the conference and Kendall’s birthday in episode 7.

But - at the beginning of episode 6, we see the DOJ has progressed significantly in its investigation. Lisa mentions that Waystar has offered up billions of documents, organized employee interviews, etc. I have a tiny bit of experience in these things, and NONE of those are fast processes. So, tbh, I’d stake a full two months passing between E5 and E6. (Which is still unrealistically fast btw - really, it should have taken more like 6 months - but is the only way to make the wedding work).

For the DOJ to be far enough that they know what the outcome is going to be… well, that SHOULD take a year, but that fucks up our whole timeline, so I’m going to peg it at another month. So, E6 takes place in early August, and E7 in late August. (Or maybe mid-July and mid-August). That means the wedding episodes have to be in September to make the wedding work.

So there you have it, folks! It’s been a little less than a year since the events of Succession started. Which frankly just drives home how nuts this entire family is.

#succession #hope you enjoy

[pynkhues]

Important succession question: was Nate dating Shiv first and then became friends with Kendall or was Nate friends with Kendall and then started dating Shiv? I cannot express how much both options fascinate me

Anon, this is a question that lives rent free in my head! One of the things I find especially interesting is that Tom actually knows him as a friend of Kendall's before he knows he's anything to Shiv at all. Like this:

Happens before this:

Which kind of does make it seem like maybe Kendall's talked about Nate in more contexts than Shiv has, which is particularly interesting given Kendall seemingly didn't mention that he dated his sister, haha.

But yes! As to who met who first, I think there are two questions that really impact how you can speculate that: first, what you think the age gap between Shiv and Kendall is (I'm a golden-trio-are-close-in-age truther, so I tend to put it as four years max), and when you think Kendall was in Shanghai.

The latter question is one I've seen contested a lot - I know a few people who think it was probably after rehab as a sort of exile like Roman being sent to LA was / an extension of 'you send the weak one away', but I actually think the show kind of gave us the answer for that when Logan was seriously looking to bring Shiv into the company.

I strongly suspect that he's basing that loosely off what he took Kendall through, minus a few things (like we know that Kendall got his MBA at Harvard and that he interned at Logan's papers, because he mentions it in Dundee, etc.) and likely with a condensed timeline just because of Kendall and Logan's respective ages at the time Kendall was going through it.

In my master timeline that I'll one day actually post, haha, I tend to put Kendall as having been born in 1979/1980 (s1 of the show is specifically set in 2018, and Kendall turns 40 in s3 which I think is meant to be roughly a year later). If that's the case, I think an estimate of Kendall's professional history would be:

at Harvard 1997-2002

Starting at Waystar and learning from Gerri/Baird/Frank/Karl for probably a few years, not one, lets say three or four, so that takes us through to about 2006. Kendall marries Rava in about 2004 too, so that fits neatly into this period as well.

Shanghai maybe 2007-2008

UK for a while, let's say through 2010.

Back for six months of management training

In roughly 2011 he's shadowing his father

2015 we know was rehab, which was a spanner in the works.

Then 2016-2018 was him back to shadowing his father with the view to take over.

That would put Kendall at about 28 while they were in Shanghai, and then poses the new question of how you think Kendall met Nate if not through Shiv.

I don't think Nate ever worked at Waystar, because I think it would've come up, so that's off the table. If you go with my rough estimate of Shiv being about 24 then, she would've graduated college herself and maybe met Nate interning then connected him and Ken when Ken was alone in Shanghai, but that doesn't really seem like something Shiv would do. Nate could've gone to college with either one of them too, but then that doesn't seem to really fit with the way he's talked about either.

I tend to lean towards Kendall knowing Nate first, and I tend to think they probably actually met in Shanghai? Given Nate's career path, I think you could make the argument that he was working somewhere like the US Embassy & Consulate in Shanghai which would make sense as to why Gil hired him and also put him pretty neatly in Kendall's orbit both professionally and personally.

After that, I kind of think it would be a pretty clear path as to Shiv meeting him, especially because Kendall's the only one who really seems to bring outsiders-in in that way like he's done with Stewy, Jess and Naomi.

But of course, that's a lot of speculation, haha. It's a really fun one to think about though - the show does such an awesome job of just dropping in these details that hint at so much storyworld.

What do you think though?

#i think if nate worked at the embassy too it would've been like #the sort of neat strategic thing which made kendall feel like he was playing logan correctly #which also makes sense for that sort of time period #nate sofrelli #kendall roy #shiv roy #tom wambsgans #kendall + nate #nate + shiv #hbo succession #succession meta #speculation #welcome to my ama

[pynkhues]

how do you think the roy kids were in college? shiv’s dancing in 3x07, connor not seeing logan for multiple years, kendall the “king” of the lampoon, and roman being sent to military school all give such bizarre setups for their college years

I mean, y’know. Messy, on all fronts, hahaha.

Interestingly, Kendall’s the only one we actually know for a fact went to college at all (and did postgrad at that), but I do suspect all four of them went with varying degrees of success and levels of study. In a lot of ways, I feel like it probably contributed to the divide between them that’s being emphasised this season – the one that positions Kendall and Shiv as the unabused overachievers, and Roman and Connor as the abused and neglected underachievers – it’s a bullshit perception obviously, and one that only really seems to be felt fully by Kendall and Shiv.

After all, Roman and Connor aren’t underachievers, at least no more than the rest of them, and Kendall and Shiv aren’t unabused, but I do think this divide has contributed to the ways that they likely navigated the college experience.

Kendall & Shiv

With the way Kendall and Shiv seem to view each other as intellectual equals (I always find it kind of fascinating that their attacks of each other usually boil down to Kendall’s addiction and mental health and Shiv’s gender and inexperience in business as opposed to attacks on intelligence, which they both level at Roman and Connor), I do feel they probably have similar degrees of education, which makes me think that Shiv did postgrad too. I think she would’ve deliberately not gone to Harvard, since Kendall went there, but I do think she would’ve gone to an on-par Ivy League school, and I do think it’s pretty likely that she did political science given her career trajectory at the start of the show and her academic political knowledge in 3.06.

In a lot of ways, I do think Kendall and Shiv are mirrors of each other, so I do think they probably engaged similarly at school. I think they both probably partied harder than they should’ve, that they coasted on their assumed intelligence as the ‘smart’ siblings until they fucked something up and the shame of that likely had them either working hard or cheating, and I think they both did a lot of extra curriculars to pad their resume. I don’t think either of them would know what to do in a team sport, but we know Kendall worked in distribution for the Lampoon (one of my favourite jokes on this show will always be him equating working operationally for it as meaning he was default funny), and I imagine Shiv would’ve scoffed at that and differentiated herself by working like - - editorial at Yale Daily News or something. Something she thought their dad would respect (which I actually do think he would’ve liked, but I don’t think he would’ve respected, because at the end of the day, he’s never respected any of his children, but especially not Shiv).

I think they both probably had messy college hook ups and experimented more than they’d ever actually admit, and I think they’d both absolutely feel they were the little prince and little princess of their respective campuses. Something to front annoyance at, but secretly relish in the security and familiarity of, and - - yeah. I think college probably felt safe for both of them. Far enough away from their father to feel like they had freedom, while still close enough to feel protected (and leashed), and I think they both probably did well enough to enjoy coming home for their gold stars and their pats on the head, just as I think they both probably spun out when they realised Logan was never going to be the father who gave gold stars or pats on the head (if they just do better though, y’know, maybe - - )

Connor

I’ve looong had the headcanon that Connor went but never graduated.

I kinda feel like he would’ve bounced around a bit? If he was 15 when Kendall was born, and if Logan had snatched him back up at that point (which I do kinda suspect he would have), he was likely in college when Roman and Shiv were born. I can see him potentially trying to stay closer to the family as a result of that, especially if he had already bonded with Kendall who would’ve been, what? Three? When he went to college? So he might’ve started off at a university in England, or been content to be away in the States during the semesters (especially if his mother was still alive), but spent holidays home with the Roy side of the family.

In that sense, I could see him at somewhere like UCLA? Connor would’ve been in college in the early 1980s, and I think he would’ve been into the college lifestyle of chill parties and a bit of activism here and there, depending on who he liked, and following bands around, but I also think he was a traumatised young man who was torn between feeling like an usurped heir to an empire and a boy forcibly separated from both parents desperately trying to establish himself in an expanding family back home. The fact of that alone I think means his perspective was off, and without the family unit the golden trio find in each other and him, he would’ve been an 18, 19, 20-year-old man trying to figure himself out with siblings so young strangers likely mistook them for his children.

I don’t know how likely it actually would be, but I will say that I kind of like the idea that Connor’s the only one of the four of them who’s kind of good at team sport? He canonically horse rides, so maybe he does polo, haha, but I also kind of like this idea that maybe for a hot minute he was good at football? I like the idea that maybe he briefly was good enough at something Logan valued to form a bond over, and that it maybe fell apart as he was never quite good enough, because god, isn’t that just Connor’s life story?

Roman

In terms of college, I actually find Roman the hardest to pin down? I do think he graduated, just because I don’t think he could’ve handled that level of disappointment from his dad if he hadn’t, but I don’t think he did postgrad. I think he probably went to an Ivy still though? Insider and Wall Street Journal tell me that Brown and Dartmouth are usually ranked lowest of the Ivy’s, so I kinda think he probably went to one of those.

I actually think he probably worked harder than Kendall and Shiv did, at least in his first year there, and maybe even performed better in some classes, but that it wasn’t treated as such because the school ‘wasn’t as good’ and because he was already relegated to the fuck up son slot with Connor, so he just thought fuck it and coasted enough to graduate. I think he probably experimented with the idea of experimenting – that he flirted with people across spectrums and got close to having sex with a few of them (maybe even did with one or two), but that the experiences were uncomfortable enough for him that he never really lost himself to them like Kendall and Shiv did.

I think he made fast friendships that didn’t last, and that was probably because he was torn between his dad and school and I imagine he at this point was also starting to really face the realities of having a brother who was an addict (everything about 1.07 makes me think Roman’s experienced a Kendall overdose before, and timeline-wise, I imagine that would’ve been likely around his college days), his dad and Kendall being two factors he’s canonically protective of when it comes to outsiders, so likely impacted his ability to form friendships and relationships with others.

Yeah, he probably had a token girlfriend or two to save face, but I think in many ways, college probably felt like being sent away again for him as a result of military school (or, well, not military school, given St. Andrews had stopped being one and was instead just an outdoorsy boarding school by the time Roman would’ve gone, and the show’s attention to detail feels too specific for that to not be relevant) in a way that it didn’t for Kendall and Shiv. I don’t think he felt like the prince of his campus, I think he probably tried to get through and do well long enough to get home and give his father something that would make him happy. When he experienced the same dismissal Kendall and Shiv did though, I don’t think he spun out, I just think he probably expected it.

I don’t know though! What do you guys think?

#i do think roman's older than shiv (although i love the twin theory SO MUCH too) #so i do think that factors into roman's insecurity too #because i think shiv being so laser focused on kendall as her actual competition #probably made roman feel Some Sort of Way growing up #i highkey love the juxtaposition between kendall and shiv vs roman and connor tbh #i've been thinking about it a lot this week #especially because of that sense of all of them not really being what they should be? #like obviously connor only child / eldest son #kendall eldest son / middle child #roman middle child / youngest son #shiv youngest child / only daughter #like NONE of them get to be any one thing #even in their own family unit #it's SUCH good character set up #anyway #haha #kendall roy #shiv roy #roman roy #connor roy #hbo succession #succession meta #welcome to my ama

[pynkhues]

Idk who is older Iverson or Sophie... But what do you think Kendal's and his siblings' reaction were to that child ? What was Logan's reaction? Did Caroline come to USA or did she just call or not even that ?

That's such an interesting question, anon!

I'm perpetually fascinated by the fact that Kendall's the only one of them to have kids, although I probably shouldn't be. The show's done such a good job in the sense of carving out different ideas of family and parenthood in the four of them that I think it makes sense that Shiv wouldn't want to be a mother due to having spent her entire life trying to scrap for independence and survival in a man's world, and Connor, especially after s3, wouldn't want to be a father because he felt he'd already done it with the golden trio.

This might be controversial, I'm not sure (and I'd genuinely love to hear other people's takes on this), but of the four of them, I think Kendall and Roman are probably the only ones who want kids. Kendall's a bad dad, clearly, haha, but I do think he wants them and that he loves them as best he can, and I think Roman deep down wants a family of his own but between his fear of failure, personal and familial insecurities, aversion to penetrative sex and general flightiness, it's just not something that's eventuated.

More to your point though, I do think Sophie and Iverson are supposed to be close in age.

It's an interesting thing to consider because while the show's never explicitly said it, Sophie does seem to be adopted, and given how young Kendall and Rava were when they got married (Roman says Ken's bachelor party was 15-ish years ago in 3.04, making Kendall roughly 24/25) and the fact that Sophie and Iverson are probably roughly 12/13 in the show, it seems like they had them pretty quickly.

We don't know what any of that looks like, of course, but I tend to headcanon that Kendall and Rava had been trying for a year or so, and when they didn't get pregnant right away, decided to adopt. When they started that process - the pressure off - they got pregnant naturally and decided to keep both the pregnancy and the adopted child. It's something I think is more common than people realise (it's what happened both with my cousins, and with a co-worker, and I've heard it anecdotally happening elsewhere too), and I can absolutely see Kendall getting swept up in the rapid expansion of a family and going all in, haha.

As for the rest of the family, I think the responses would've been really mixed! I do think Logan would've been pleased – it furthers his legacy after all, and I suspect it probably gave the impression that Kendall was 'settling down' and 'growing up' in a way that might've curbed the concern around Kendall's partying. Given Kendall's a guy too, I don't think Logan would expect parenthood to have the same sort of impact on him that he would of Shiv.

Caroline it's harder to tell, but I imagine there was a lot of pomp around it. Her family legacy is already cemented, but new additions to that I imagine require a degree of ceremony too. I can see her goading Kendall and Rava into bringing the kids back to England for baptisms, which if you read Rava as Jewish (which I do) was probably the source of a lot of drama.

And Shiv, Roman and Connor! Oh gosh, hahahaha. I think they would've been happy for him on the one hand, but mostly kind of disturbed that he was now a father, haha, especially if he was in his mid-to-late twenties when he had them. It must've been such a weird time in general, but with the added disaster of their parents, Kendall's addiction issues, and just how young the golden trio were - - look, just thank goodness for nannies, haha.

What do you guys think?

#kendall roy #roy siblings #succ spec #succession headcanons #it makes me really curious about rava's family actually too #and what those interpersonal dynamics were like? #i imagine disastrous given how much tom's family is cut out #although i do get the impression rava comes from money herself moreso than tom does #rava roy #hbo succession #succession meta #welcome to my ama

[pynkhues]

yes please make a timeline! i totally missed alan saying there's a 15 year age difference. that's interesting because 15 is such an emotionally intense period in life and by that age you are pretty firmly set in only child ways! i feel like connor really threw himself into the big brother/father surrogate role partly bc he felt abandoned by logan and this was a way to 'secure' his position in the family and logan's life (part 1)

(part 2) plus i do think connor probably wanted siblings as a kid and was happy to get them even at 15. connor probably had a lonely childhood if his mom struggled with mental health and logan was focused on building his empire. suddenly having 3 little kids was a big change but probably welcome for connor.

(part 3) i wonder if connor's distance from waystar reflects his childhood - at that point perhaps logan didn't use the business as a stand-in for family matters as much as he currently does and did during the trio's childhood (i think the dynamics w connor's mom played into this too). so for connor waystar was just his dad's job and not something to be used to gain his dad's attention or affection but just a demanding job that took his dad away a lot from him. just some thoughts!

(x)

I agree on all counts, anon! Fifteen is such a tricky age, because it's one where you're both still a child in so many ways, but also are at a point where you're having your own, independent lived experiences that are shaping you into the adult you're going to become. It also really tells us that he doesn't have a shared childhood with Kendall, Shiv and Roman in the way they do with each other.

Gosh, I was re-watching 1.08 the other day, and Connor telling Roman about getting high and having a spiritual experience listening to Fleetwood Mac in 1986 is one of my favourites in that sense. He's talking about a bright, young adult experience in a year where, canonically, he would've been about 22 (s1 is set in 2018) and Kendall would've only been six or seven, Roman and Shiv even younger. It's really reiterated across the episode with Connor chiming in on the dog pound story, remembering as an adult what Kendall and Roman are remembering as children (Roman's only four in the memory after all, and depending on what you think the age gap between Kendall and Roman is [I tend to think it's about three years], Kendall's a very little kid too).

But yes! To your point, Connor going from the isolation and loneliness of being his father's only son to suddenly having three little siblings would've been stark in any instance, but if it came after a period of abandonment from Logan, I think it would've been a really difficult cocktail of want and happiness and resentment and confusion. What that meant at the time is hard to know, but I think the show underlining just how much Connor stepped up for them in s3 tells us he developed a real attachment and protectiveness and love for them. I think he probably wanted to give them what he didn't have, and while I doubt he was always successful, I think he gave them something, y'know?

That's a really interesting thought about Waystar too! I think you could be onto something, especially given Logan and Connor's exchange in 3.05 when Connor asks him for a job at the firm:

It makes for a really interesting and loaded beat, especially when you consider Shiv, Roman and Kendall have each been 'not interested' - Shiv with politics, Roman with quitting after the Waystar Studios fiasco pre-series, and Kendall trying to get out in 3.08 - and Logan's never really cared. He wanted them in, regardless, and he never stopped trying to get them there or get them back.

What that says about his relationship to and expectations of Connor - - it's hard to say, but I think you're right in that it was likely fueled by a different upbringing and a different family life, something likely cemented by Logan being so much younger when he had Connor, and Connor's mother being, well, we don't really know, but I think very, very different from Caroline, haha.

#i imagine it must've been weird too #going to see your father at what #twenty? and he's got a five year old and a pair of toddlers #of course i imagine the golden trio were left with the nannies more than logan and caroline at that age but still #connor's done the hard yards in so many ways #i really hope we find out more about his mother at some point #connor roy #logan roy #connor + logan #hbo succession #succession 3.05 #welcome to my ama #succession meta #succession 1.08