The Roy children’s mistake was that they failed to realize that they only enjoyed privilege through Logan. If the kids played by the rules of that patriarchy, he granted them money and sinecures and even sometimes authority over those outside the family.
But it was all dependent on their relationship with him, which was horribly abusive. Over the course of four seasons, he insulted, belittled, manipulated, gaslit and even physically attacked his children. He controlled their money, undermined their relationships and demanded absolute loyalty. He cut off avenues of escape, promising them the world but never delivering it.
So none of the children had independent power bases that might have come from, say, building their own companies or from doing real jobs within their father’s empire. (Tellingly, the show rarely depicted the Roy kids actually working for the Waystar Royco empire.) The patriarchal bargain was all they had.
Kendall, in particular, had no skills useful to the rest of the world. As he correctly told his sister when begging her to support his bid for C.E.O. in the final episode, he was a cog that had been made to fit only one machine. Except that the machine in question was not, as he had thought, the Waystar Royco corporation. The machine was his relationship with his dad. And that died with Logan.
This is the dirty secret of patriarchal systems, Kandiyoti wrote: Once women have been co-opted into giving up power, they have no ability to enforce the bargain that drew them into that situation in the first place, especially once new men take control.
“For the generation of women caught in between,” she wrote, “this transformation may represent genuine personal tragedy, since they have paid the heavy price of an earlier patriarchal bargain, but are not able to cash in on its promised benefits.”
For Kendall, tragedy came not only when he lost out on the corporate power he craved, but also when his siblings abandoned him.
