Succession family tree: how are the Roys related - who is Logan's brother Ewan, and what happened to Rose?

Succession charts the story of the Roys, a media dynasty not unlike the Murdochs or the Redstones. They’re a complicated family with simple problems, i.e. that they mostly just don’t really get along with one another. 

As one fight turns into another, it can be easy to lose track of some of the details about the family. What happened to Logan’s first wife? Which sibling is older, Roman or Shiv? Did Kendall really call his son Iverson because it sounds like “I’ve a son”? 

Here’s your full guide to the Roy family, how everyone relates to each other, and all the major events we know of from their past so far (with detailed spoilers for Succession, up to and including Season 4 episode 9).

Logan Roy (Brian Cox) was born on Friday 14 October 1938 in Dundee, Scotland. That month, The Wizard of Oz began production and Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds was broadcast on radio; the war between China and Japan was entering its second year, and World War II was approaching in Europe. 

After his father’s death, Logan’s mother Helen decided her children would have a better life if they were raised in Canada by their uncle; Logan, his older brother Ewan (James Cromwell), and his younger sister Rose were sent to Quebec to live with Noah Roy. Their uncle owned a cattle ranch, which he expected Logan and Ewan to help out on, but also a print shop and some local billboards – in effect providing the starting point for Logan’s own media company. Later in life, Logan would tell his children that his uncle had been physically abusive towards him as a child (not that they appear to believe him), with deep scars on his back presumably inflicted by Noah Roy.

As adults, Logan and Ewan are estranged. Ewan hates everything that Logan stands for at Waystar Royco, describing him as both “morally bankrupt” and “more responsible for the death of this planet than any other single human being”. Their rift traces back to the Vietnam War, when Ewan enlisted but Logan didn’t. Rose, meanwhile, died at quite a young age – it’s notable that, for all that Ewan seems to hate Logan, he also insists that Logan shouldn’t blame himself for her death. Though the implicit allusion to Rosemary Kennedy suggested that whatever it was was something that her family were closely involved in, Ewan's eulogy made it clear it was something far simpler and perhaps more tragic: Logan believed he was the carrier for the polio that killed her.  

Logan went on to start a family of his own. His eldest son by his first wife, Connor (Alan Ruck), was interested in politics from a very early age. Little is known about Logan Roy’s first wife and how their marriage ended – though she’s mentioned as a candidate for a planned ‘Curse of the Roys’ podcast alongside Rose, and sometimes spoken about like a Mrs Rochester type figure – but eventually he went on to marry British aristocrat Caroline Collingwood. Beginning in 1981, they had three children together: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), then Roman (Kieran Culkin), and finally Siobhan (Sarah Snook). Through their childhood, Logan could be an absent father, with Connor often stepping in in his place. Some years later, Logan married again, with Marcia Roy (Hiam Abass) becoming his third wife.

Kendall has two children from his marriage to Rava (Natalie Gold), a son called Iverson (Quentin Morales) and an adopted daughter called Sophie (Swayam Bhatia). He and Rava have separated. Shiv is married (more or less) to Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), and Connor Roy is married to his partner Willa Ferreyra (Justine Lupe), but Roman doesn’t have any long-term relationships. 

Ewan, meanwhile, had a daughter named Marianne (Mary Birdsong). She later had a son, Gregory Hirsch (Nicholas Braun), who was nicknamed Greg the Egg as a child; Greg is first cousin once removed to the Roy children, and arguably an honorary kid.

Succession airs each Monday at 2am on Sky Atlantic. You can read our review of Succession Season 4 Episode 1 'The Munsters' right here, and find more of our Succession coverage here.

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