Succession, created by Jesse Armstrong, aired on HBO from 2018 to 2023. It explored the dynamics between Waystar Royco CEO Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his four children, Connor (Alan Ruck), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Siobhan (Sarah Snook). In Logan’s declining health, a constant question throughout the show has centred around which of his children will take over as CEO after he retires. Through nepotism and toxic family dynamics, the show addresses the problem of excessive wealth, greed, and abuse. However, one of the strongest dynamics in the show is the cycle of generational abuse that is perpetuated by Logan and, in turn, all of his children.

The cycle of abuse cannot be discussed without first contextualizing Logan’s childhood. In Season One, at the end of Episode Six, “Austerlitz”, Logan is seen climbing out of a pool with scars criss-crossing on his back. While healed now, whoever had caused them was brutal and intentional. It is never explicitly stated what those scars came from, but it is largely understood that Logan was violently abused by his uncle, with whom he and his older brother Ewan (James Cromwell) stayed with after fleeing Scotland in World War II.

We are never given flashbacks, never told explicitly what happened, and that is part of the power of Succession: the fact that the viewer must fill in the blanks with context clues and nothing more, plopped into the middle of the lives of a broken family.

Much of the history we are given on Logan occurred in Ewan’s eulogy in Season Four, Episode Nine, “Church and State.” This episode takes place almost entirely during Logan’s funeral, after his death in Episode Three of the same season, “Connor’s Wedding.” Ewan describes how they were left adrift after the engines of their ship gave out when leaving Scotland, and how himself and Logan were told if they made a sound, the U-Boats would find and sink them.

One of the most powerful lines from this monologue is “A four-year-old and a five-and-a-half-year-old speaking with our eyes.” The significance of this sentence is not lost on anyone in that room, given that Ewan was deeply critical of Logan and that they were estranged their entire adult lives. With years of not being able to understand each other, it is interesting to think of how they used to be able to speak without using any words at all.

We are also told that Logan was sent to a better school after arriving with their uncle, and after being sick and complaining about the school, he travelled back home in Quebec through his own means. Their younger sister, Rose, was a baby and unfortunately contracted polio and passed away, and Logan believed that he had been the one to pass it on to her through his own sickness and travels.

According to Ewan, their aunt and uncle did nothing to convince Logan otherwise, allowing him to live with an intense amount of guilt, shame, and likely intensified abuse due to Rose’s death. Logan was broken from a young age, and hardened as an adult. Ewan does not hesitate to criticise Logan in his eulogy as well, which adds to the pattern of the other Roy children being similarly both loving and unforgiving of their father during their speeches.

In much the same way that we know nothing of Logan’s childhood otherwise, we are also only provided snippets of conversation, shots from the show’s intro, and unsaid lines seen in the Succession script books to fill in the blanks of the type of childhood the Roy siblings had. We know that Connor is from a different mother than the other three children, and is often left out as a result; Logan also sent Connor’s mother away to a psych ward or a mental hospital.

In “Connor’s Wedding”, he kicks up a fuss about the wedding cake by calling it a “loony cake”, and the other Roy siblings had to explain to Connor’s wife, Willa (Justine Lupe), that it was because Logan and other adults at the time gave him cake for days on end, keeping him from crying after his mother was sent away. We also know that Connor did not see Logan for three years at some point in his life, likely after Logan married the other siblings’ mother Caroline (Harriet Walter).

In terms of the other children, we know that Roman was locked in a dog cage at some points, although the siblings’ accounts differ on the true nature of that. Roman himself recalled being forced to eat dog food until it was done, being put on a leash, and that Kendall had been the one to come up with this “game.”

Kendall thinks that Roman made it up, while Connor insists that Roman asked to be put in the cage, and that the dog food was chocolate cake. Roman developed problems with wetting the bed as a result, and Logan sent him to military school for “discipline”, something that Connor also claims Roman asked for. However, Connor later said to Ken, “Dad’s theory was, you got two fighting dogs; you send the weak one away. You punish the weak one. Then everyone knows the hierarchy. Then everyone’s happy. So, away he went.”

It is a brutal way to look at the world, but it is so normalised for the children that it makes sense to them. Roman was being abused by his siblings, but likely because Logan incited and encouraged it to pit the children against one another.

Logan creating divisions between his children is a consistent theme throughout this show, which helps to perpetuate that cycle of abuse. He claims that he does everything for his children, and I think that Logan genuinely believes that. He once said to Kendall that to be in the business as CEO, “you have to be a killer.” The way Logan treats his children—manipulating them and consistently dangling power in front of them—is how he tries to prepare them for the role. However, Logan is also deeply selfish and cares more about his own pride and legacy than he does the feelings of his children.

We do not know much about Kendall and Shiv’s childhoods; however, the Succession scripts contain a line from Connor discussing the “summer of competitive eating disorders”, which contextualises the odd relationship with food every sibling has. This is shown especially at their mother’s house, where she barely serves them anything to eat and often comments on how they must not be hungry. With that in mind, many scenes of the Roy children eating (or not eating, rather) make sense, along with comments from Roman on the weight of his siblings. He once called Ken “fatso” and also told Shiv that he thought she was just eating her feelings when she revealed her pregnancy to them.

The cycle extends to relationships as well. The best example of this is Shiv’s marriage with Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). Their marriage parallels the relationship Shiv has with her father, in the sense of the constant push and pull that favoured someone in one moment and betrayed them in the next. I do believe that they truly loved each other, but love was never enough to overpower the toxicity the abuse cycle brought.

In Season Four, Episode Seven, “Tailgate Party”, Tom says that it’s not his fault that Shiv never got her father’s approval, which emphasises just how much Logan’s approval mattered to both of them and factored into their marriage. Logan’s actions directly contributed to Shiv’s need for control and power in her relationship, which, in turn, caused Tom to want to prove to Logan that he “deserved” to be with Shiv.

With Tom under his wing, Logan coached him to continue the cycle of toxic power dynamics in his own marriage, putting Shiv in a similar position that Caroline was in while married to Logan. Logan once said to Shiv that she was “marrying a man fathoms below her” because she was afraid of being betrayed, and there was definitely some truth to this. However, in Shiv’s fight to be more than just a woman to be overpowered in her father’s eyes, she inadvertently helped him to create a situation that put her in her place every time.

She said at his funeral that Logan could not fit an entire woman into his head, and that applied to her as well. Logan admitted to her openly that her being a woman was a “minus”, and her brothers also partook in casting her aside. There is absolutely genuine love between the siblings, but there is undoubtedly still misogyny that underlies the way her brothers speak to her.

She was a woman first, a daughter and sister second, and someone worthy of respect last. These dynamics fractured Shiv’s ability to be vulnerable with other people, given that she was always fighting for an equal place at the table. If she could not let in the people she was supposed to trust the most, then who could she trust at all?

Kendall often mirrors Logan unintentionally in the way he treats his children and his ex-wife, Rava (Natalie Gold). “Church and State” follows a presidential election in the United States in which Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk), a far-right and bigoted candidate, won. His questionable victory, as well as his dangerous views on both women and people of colour, pushed the country into chaos. Kendall’s adopted daughter, Sophie, was of South Asian descent and strongly felt the effects of the election.

In the early parts of the episode, Rava called Ken and explained they were missing the funeral because she felt unsafe, and Kendall could not accept that. He showed up to the apartment to Rava packing up the children and proceeded to yell at her in front of them and demand that they come to the funeral, to which Rava refused. He then said he could put in an emergency court order to keep them in the city and even told his assistant that he was gunning for full custody. Kendall’s demands for custody and aggression in front of his children parallel Logan’s controlling nature and also Logan’s relationship with his own children.

However, Caroline willingly gave Logan custody to protect the children's shares in the company, although I’d argue that even if she had fought him on that, she would’ve lost; Caroline once said that she had never won a battle in her life, and her marriage of fifteen years with Logan likely wore her down to the point of not fighting anymore.

After Kendall accidentally caused the death of a young man in the Season One finale, “Nobody Is Ever Missing,” he refers to his lack of connection with his children. We also rarely see them throughout the show, and while he insists he does everything for them, many of the choices he makes are for his own benefit. I am not going to say outright that Kendall didn’t love his children—I truly believe he did—but they did not factor into his chase for power over the company. He chose to back Mencken at ATN and call the election early because Mencken agreed to block a deal that would result in Logan selling the company to Swedish entrepreneur Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgård), and the other candidate had not.

For his own reasons of keeping the company in the family and eventually taking over, Kendall chose to back a candidate whose policies cause his daughter to be scared for her life. In the same way that Logan made choices to preserve his own position and pride, Kendall did as well. In the series finale, “With Open Eyes”, Shiv recognised that Kendall, like Logan, was unwilling to break the cycle and chose to change her vote to allow the Mattson deal to go through.

Another interesting parallel between Kendall and Logan is the role that an accidental death played in their stories. Logan will never really know if he had truly given polio to his baby sister, much like Kendall will never know if he could’ve saved the boy if he had done anything differently. However, Logan’s uncle and aunt used that to likely further abuse him, while Logan used Kendall’s actions and guilt to get what he wanted. Because Logan had had his own guilt manipulated, he knew exactly how to do it to Kendall, exploiting his shame to bring him back under control by using the disguise of love.

Logan had called Kendall his “number one boy”, hugging him and kissing his forehead while he sobbed in his father’s arms. This line was especially important in manipulating Kendall, given that he was the most obvious heir at the beginning of the show until Logan changed his mind and then publicly betrayed his father by attempting a vote of no confidence and then a hostile takeover; Kendall was the traitor who had fallen out of his father’s good graces, so the comfort and reassurance that Logan provided brought Kendall back into the fold by reminding him of his potential to succeed his father. Thus, the cycle continued.

Roman was the one that had trouble standing up to Logan the most. It is implied (but never stated directly) that Roman may have suffered sexual abuse at some point in his childhood, resulting in him being hypersexual verbally but incapable of having sex with another person. The exception to this is Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Shiv’s Godmother, who Roman enjoys being degraded by in return for sexual pleasure.

He also sends nude photos of himself to Gerri, who does not invite it but does not shut it down until much later (and even when she does, Roman does not listen). I believe the degradation stems from his childhood of being verbally and physically abused by his father; the need for approval and affection from Logan never fully causes Roman to rebel, unlike his siblings, and it creates a perverse dynamic of almost craving abuse from Logan if it meant any attention at all.

In Season One, Episode Six, “Who’s Side Are You On”, Roman had agreed with Kendall to vote against their father in a vote of no confidence but backed down in the boardroom when the vote actually occurred; Logan had yelled Roman’s full name, “Romulus”, when Roman had started to raise his hand, and he visibly flinched before lowering it. Logan was the only person who had any power over Roman, with the abuse solidifying a need to appease his father whenever possible. Logan knew this and mocked Roman for it, at one point using a slur against him and accusing him of being homosexual, after Roman praised his father in a video.

Roman expressing love and affection to his father only leads to further rejection, which pushes him to further prove himself to Logan whenever possible. Logan also bread-crumbs him, showing him occasional approval when Roman did what he wanted, which perpetuates both Roman’s desire for fatherly love and Logan’s power over him.

In another scene at the end of Season Three, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman went to Logan to attempt to block the deal of Mattson buying Waystar Royco, only to discover that Logan had overturned the deal in the divorce settlement with Caroline that allowed them to block such deals.

In this scene, Roman comes into that confrontation not with anger, not as a scorned heir, but as Logan’s child attempting to appeal to that bond. When Logan asks what Roman can offer as an alternative to Mattson’s deal, all Roman can say is love. Logan mocks him once again, saying that that is not enough, but it says a lot about Roman, ever the sarcastic and unserious one, that the only person he approaches with any kind of sincerity is his father, from whom he’ll never get it.

Shiv said at Logan’s funeral: “He kept us outside, but he kept everyone outside. But, when he let you in, when the sun shone…it was warm in the light.” Logan held this feeling over the heads of everyone in his life, and this can be attributed, in part, to his abusive childhood. The deeper shame is that he was unable and unwilling to break the cycle of abuse and trauma that started with him and seemed to revel in the position of power he held over others as a result of that. Even more than that, the Roy children fell for it every time, allowing it to continue in their own lives. Every Roy child represented different facets of the abuse that Logan inflicted, much like Logan was a direct result of his own.