Kendall Roy, the eldest middle son and me

He is a mirror. A dirty, cracked, meth-covered mirror.

The pilot’s flying the plane, son.

I often feel silly writing about myself. Always have and always will. It’s a dozen different things, and likely a couple of issues that I’ll keep locked up until I finally learn to drink. But the long and short of it is, I’ve spent my life reciting a speech about myself that often feels untrue. The first thing on that list is that I’m an eldest child. Strictly speaking, that isn’t true. I’m the eldest of my biological father’s children, but through my mother I’m the second born. Since she’s the one who did the whole “raising me” thing, that makes me the awkward middle child…right?

It’s a little more complicated than that.

When I watch Kendall Roy on Succession, it’s like I’m watching my own worst nightmare. A man so fundamentally broken by the uneven balance of responsibility to capability that he’s become an addict. The type of father who thinks he’s doing a good job because he isn’t actively hurting his children, and instead is just abandoning them. Sympathetic only through pitying eyes. An emotional parasite. I don’t think I’m actually like him (for starters, no meth) but this is what cracking under the pressure looks like. A lot of that pressure is internal.

He’s an ego monster. A man too lacking in understanding of his own level of competency that he, just like Connor Roy, is basically unable to function in the real world. Unlike his elder brother, picked as the runt of the litter, he’s been given the basic training to succeed. That just wasn’t enough. Wealth is both a handicap to him, sending him spiralling at the smallest pushback, and his only viable solution. Watch him throw money at his problems (mergers, buy outs, mid-life crisis) until they go away.

Sometimes his spiral is into drugs, but oftentimes it’s him just failing to put on the drag version of his father’s bravado. He throws some swear words around, fails to impress, and just shuts off to the world. Season three teased at a suicide attempt, but it isn’t as simple as that. This is not a man who would is self-destructing indirectly. His only response to stress is to try and implode everything around him, and if he dies, he dies.

The man is dragging others down with him too. I mean, look to his children, because he certainly won’t. So afraid of being his father that the only logical response is to abandon them. Season one saw him comforting his children as they began to feel the effects of their grandfather’s ill health, but as the show progressed, they were gone. Left behind on the world’s most pathetic bender.

The frantic ripping through of birthday presents at his party in season three looking for his children’s present is probably the moment in which everything becomes obvious. It isn’t them he wants, it’s the validation that they still care. That they know him and love him. As we roll through season four, he hasn’t seen either Sophie or Iverson in months. He’s too busy being focused on his own father to be a father.

Kendall is the heir that Connor was never meant to be. His number one boy. At his height in season one, he’s dressed in a perfect businessman suit, but everything is wrong. Casting Jeremy Strong is perfect, because that is a man who can 100% communicate a complete lack of backbone, even as he blusters through a scene. He does business like money is infinite and success is guaranteed. It’s why nobody, least of all his father, can be bothered to respect him. And that is the pushback that sends him spiralling.

Well, that and Rava.

His divorce binds him closer to the Logan Roy pattern, but unlike his father, you don’t get the sense that he’s in control. Despite being insanely wealthy and theoretically powerful, there’s no cards being played here. He argues with her in season one that her lawyers are fucking him over, but even she knows that’s not why he’s upset. She’s giving him space, but clearly the patience has worn thin. Still seemingly not fully divorced in season three, he shows up at her apartment to commandeer it as a war room. No signs of the kids. Maybe they’re both mad he killed their rabbit in season one. Whatever the case, they’re all about to run into each other in the next few episodes.

Watching Kendall process his father’s death is probably the most insightful moment in the entire show. Because while everyone has a little cry and a bit of numbness, this is the man we saw in season one. Except with a little more perspective, and maybe a bit of a soul. Obviously, he’s upset at Logan being dead, but there’s a clear sense of focus that we haven’t seen in him since before  he killed that guy.

Oh yeah, he kind of killed a man. Or at least, let him die. That might be worse.

With Logan’s death, we’re about to see everyone move with even less caution than before. For all Logan Roy was a bad man, he was at least somewhat savvy. But with Kendall in particular, we’re about to see the full-grown man version of himself. This is who he can be without his father’s support, protection, and whatever the opposite of those things are. The actual succession is literally up for grabs. Like a royal court in the days of yore, the will of a dead man only has as much legitimacy as you allow it to. Look to Gerri, who is ignoring her dismissal because the man who did it is dead.

I can’t – I can’t forgive you. But uh, yeah, but I, it’s ok – and I love you.

There were a lot of reactions to Logan’s passing, some vulnerable, some callous, many surprising. Kerry in particular stole the show with her stunned laughter as she was coldly pushed out of the war room. The kids as a whole took similar paths once the initial shock wore off – try to sort the mess out and stand strong to the press. As the eldest son of the trio (sorry, Connor), Kendall seemed to handle himself the best. Maybe it’s just relief, and the sense that he can finally step into the role he was born for. It’s really over. He will grieve, he will never get any real closure, but he can also breathe.

It’s weird to admit you relate to a character you also slightly despise. This is a man that does not hold the same values or responsibilities I do, but the very foundation of his life is so similar to mine. I’ve been the eldest middle son. The one who has to step up because the basic structures of whatever a family is meant to be feels like they’re crumbling. The golden child in theory only. But I’ve also fully failed in that role.

There’s this tendency online to baby this fictional character in the context of the show. It’s weird and gross but makes absolute sense. When people are going on about how “baby” Kendall Roy is, they’re not responding to him as a character. He’s an archetype. We’re watching a hero’s journey in real time, the usurped Prince trying to retake his throne. Plus, he’s bad at it. That’s sympathy points right there.  

Kendall is not a “good guy”. Not just in the way that everyone is in the show, he’s just genuinely not a great person. He’s a mixed bag of emotions and failure, dragging everyone down with him. It’s deeply human to try your best and fail, but now that we’re coming towards the end, I’m not sure what his best is. It certainly isn’t business, the thing which he has put all his hard work and soul into. Nor fatherhood, a job for which he clearly has no interest. Maybe he should go back to rap.

But whatever he does, he does without his father to guide him. Maybe he never had Logan’s gratitude, or admiration, or pride. But he had his love and protection. The nightmare of being the heir is gone now, but so is the certainty. What is his life without the man who he has based a lifetime’s of decisions around?