Shiv Roy: Crucified for Caring (Micro-Post)
Lorde was right, she's kinda like a prettier Jesus.
When you sacrifice everything you have for a life you never wanted in the first place, who will throw the party to celebrate?
Not her. Not Tom. Not Roman, Not Kendall, Not Connor, Nobody.
Shiv Roy has had a very long journey up to this point, and I think I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that she was the child most likely to end up as CEO, if she was a boy. But she’s not, she’s a victim of circumstances beyond her control. She’s a smart, powerful person stuck in a woman’s body in the corporate world. Sure, she has the business savviness of Blockbuster and cannot scheme to save her life, but why would that disqualify her as the best candidate against Slurs McGee (Roman Roy) and America’s Most Wanted (Kendall Roy)? Who else is missing? Gerri got fired, Tom is Tom, and Connor—
Oh yeah, Connor.
Look I’m sorry but that man can’t even craft a gingerbread house, much less a presidential campaign into the White House. Does he even know what you do in a stockholders meeting? I still don’t but I feel like I do, which makes me feel like I’m more prepared for the role than he is.
Shiv had seen what this rat race was doing to everybody in her life, it was turning them into monsters. It was turning them into their father, the one who couldn’t be anything for her beyond an ‘okay’. He was rated the same way you would judge a McDonald’s breakfast.
She knew if she let Roman win, it would be the very end of the business and him because ultimately it’s clear that he never wanted to be the CEO, it was all a cry for attention due to his unresolved issues.
Kendall was never going to be enough. For himself, for his family, for his father, it would be masochism to have that role. He couldn’t handle very minor inconveniences (putting his hands on his pregnant sister over a low-blow from Roman who said the EXACT SAME THING they always do with Connor as a half-sibling) and had a hard time with criticism and personal attacks, and it would all end with him on the the front of a newspaper or the side of a milk carton.
Connor is Connor.
And this leaves her. But throughout the series I think we saw glimpses of old Shiv, one that was as content being outside the business as she was in taking revenge against her father for his coldness and constant underestimation. But when she went into the company, approval from him became her driving force, no matter how many times it chipped away at her very morals and nature. She needed a way to secure a future for her family, and to release them from the cycle of power and its grips that have been strangling them all their lives.
Tom. Tom thinks he’s a mastermind, slowly working up the ranks of the company and showing his unwavering loyalty to the future of RoyCo to solidify his place as top dog. But I think Shiv had always planned for this to be the end, maybe not at first, but somewhere along the way. She has a baby with a possible CEO of the company, why not better her odds of power even if by proxy?
But in doing so, she kinda walked into a prison of her own. She became her mother. The left-hand neglectful woman to a power-hungry man with nowhere to go but up as long as he keeps shoving everybody below him. She became a mother. A label that she knew would chain her forever, that she had been avoiding for so many years. She had to sacrifice her own dreams to give everybody the best chance of a life free of Logan’s voice and gun on the back of their heads at every waking moment. But now, she’s seen as a traitor, a loser, a wife, a failed girlboss, a terrible sister and a potentially worse mother.
But she chose this path, and who truly knows what’s to come of it. She has all the evidence against Tom and Greg being the ones to ultimately cover up the scandal and she has Tom wrapped around her fingers even when he has more power than her within the company currently as CEO after the buy-out (i know y’all think the ending scene with them in the car is him showing his authority, but think about what he does. He waits for her to put her hand OVER his. she is still the one with the upper-hand in the relationship and will most likely be the ender of it). She has him by the rings for the rest of her life and can divorce him and take everything, including those with loyalty to the Roy name. She can literally decide to not even have that baby if she wants to, I feel like a lot of people have started to underestimate Shiv in the same way her father did. But this is all implying that this isn’t the life she wants. Trauma and death changes people, sometimes for the better, and we just have to assume whatever we want for them. Maybe she grows old with Tom, tormenting him in the day but cuddling with him at night, and learns the power of having a parent in your corner as a child in the great big scary world of economics and politics. Maybe her kid will grow up to be a president with a republican-leaning supreme court on their neck. She may be a lot of things, but she is far from the monster that runs in her blood.
Shiv Roy may be a loser. may be a terrible person. But she is not a quitter (sometimes).
CUE THE MUSIC!
Thank you for reading this little small blurb about Succession and Shiv Roy, I just needed to put all my thoughts out there about her and just the general discussions about the finale that I think tweets wouldn’t do justice. I might be more of these micro-posts (shorter newsletters) in between the bigger ones so I don’t feel stuck or burnt out! Let me know if you like them, and let me know what you think of the Succession finale and series overall in the comments or dms!