Succession · A Viewer's Companion
One media empire, four heirs, and a cousin nobody can place. Here's how the Roys actually connect.
Everyone at Waystar Royco acts like family, which is exactly the problem: only some of them are. This chart sorts it — steel-blue borders are blood Roys (Logan's own line), grey means married in or almost family (Tom, Willa, the wives), and green is the Ewan branch — the estranged brother whose grandson is the "Cousin Greg" everyone struggles to place. The interchangeable executives (Gerri? Karolina? Kerry?) get their own strip below.
The four things that make the Roys confusing
Nobody in this show explains who they are — they assume you already fear them. These are the connections the dialogue never spells out.
Who is Greg actually related to?
Greg's grandfather Ewan is Logan's brother, and Greg's (never-seen) mother Marianne is Ewan's daughter. So Greg is Logan's great-nephew and the siblings' first cousin once removed — blood family, not a hanger-on. He arrives broke because his side of the family never touched the Waystar money. "Cousin Greg" is genealogically sloppy but emotionally accurate.
Why Ewan matters
Ewan Roy is the one person alive who knew Logan before the empire — the brother who helped raise him in Canada and now despises everything Waystar is. He sits on the money he owns, donates to Greenpeace, cuts Greg out of his will for choosing Logan's world, and delivers the funeral eulogy that says what no one else dares: exactly who Logan was.
Tom is not a Roy
Tom Wambsgans married Shiv in the Season 1 finale — that's his entire claim on the family, and everyone (Shiv included) makes sure he feels it. He's from Minnesota, he runs cruises and then the news channel ATN, and he even volunteers for prison to prove his loyalty. The show's final joke: the empire ends up run by the one who married in.
Connor's different — literally
Connor is the eldest child but only half-sibling to the other three: his mother was Logan's first wife, institutionalized and never shown. He grew up before the money got truly enormous, holds no job at Waystar, and pours his inheritance into a doomed presidential run and Willa. When Kendall calls himself the "eldest boy," he's erasing Connor — and Connor notices.
Logan's women, in order
First wife: unseen, Connor's mother. Second: Caroline Collingwood, the English aristocrat who raised (at a distance) Kendall, Shiv and Roman — and whose renegotiated divorce deal lets Logan cut the kids out of the trust. Third: Marcia, the watchful Lebanese wife of the early seasons. And finally Kerry, the assistant-turned-girlfriend, who is never a wife at all.
The name decoder
Half this cast are interchangeable men in suits and women named with a K sound. Keep these apart:
Gerri vs. Karolina vs. Kerry
Three different women in Logan's orbit. Gerri = general counsel, the lawyer, twice interim CEO. Karolina = head of PR, the crisis manager at every podium. Kerry = Logan's personal assistant and late-life girlfriend.
Marcia vs. Caroline
Marcia (Hiam Abbass) is Logan's current, third wife. Caroline (Harriet Walter) is the ex — and the actual mother of Kendall, Shiv and Roman. The kids' "mom" and Logan's "wife" are two different people.
Tom and Greg — one married in, one is blood
The "disgusting brothers" are opposites: Tom has no Roy blood at all (he married Shiv), while Greg is a genuine blood relative (Ewan's grandson). The family treats it the other way round.
Frank vs. Karl vs. Hugo
The gray-haired suits. Frank = vice chairman, Kendall's old mentor, fired and rehired for decades. Karl = the CFO, Frank's bickering double-act partner. Hugo = the junior one — comms, doing the dirty spin work.
Shiv = Siobhan
One person. Siobhan (pronounced shiv-AWN) is her legal name; everyone calls her Shiv — which is also, not accidentally, a word for a prison knife.
"I'm the eldest boy!"
Kendall's finale cry — but Connor is the eldest. Kendall means eldest son of Caroline's brood, the marriage that "counts." The chart shows why the claim is both true-ish and delusional.
Logan's nicknames, decoded
Romulus = Roman. Pinky = Shiv. Ken = Kendall. The nicknames come out fondly or as a knife — usually both at once.
Stewy is not an employee
Stewy Hosseini is Kendall's college friend turned private-equity raider — he sits on the board and keeps ending up on whichever side is winning. He was never Waystar staff.
The Waystar suits — not family, always in the room
Gerri Kellman
General counsel and the only adult in most rooms — twice interim CEO, and the target of Roman's very inadvisable texts.
Frank Vernon
Vice chairman. Logan has fired him more times than anyone can count; he always comes back. Kendall's old mentor.
Karl Muller
Chief financial officer, Frank's double-act partner — mostly loyal, entirely for sale, eyeing retirement in Greece.
Karolina Novotney
Head of PR — the calm voice drafting the statement while the family sets fire to the news cycle. Not Kerry.
Hugo Baker
Communications fixer ranked just below Karolina — the one Kendall uses for the jobs too grubby to say out loud.
Kerry Castellabate
Logan's assistant, then girlfriend, then would-be ATN anchor — frozen out by the family within hours of his death.
Lukas Matsson
The GoJo tech founder who buys Waystar out from under all of them — and hands the crown to Tom, not a Roy.
Stewy Hosseini
Kendall's oldest friend and smoothest betrayer — private equity money with a board seat and no loyalty required.
A note on the portraits: these are the characters as they appear on screen — stills from the Succession wiki, cropped and served from this site so they load without an internet round-trip to anyone else. Chart and notes cover the complete series, all four seasons (2018–2023) — spoilers through the finale. † marks characters dead by the end of the show (Logan).