Characters / Succession: Shiv Roy

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Main Characters (Logan Roy, Kendall Roy, Siobhan "Shiv" Roy, Roman Roy) | Extended Roy Family | Waystar RoyCo | Other Companies | Politics | Other Characters

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Siobhan "Shiv" Roy

"I am the smartest, which is why I can see through you."

Portrayed By: Sarah Snook

"I've always thought you were the smartest."

— Logan Roy

The youngest child and only daughter in the Roy family, Shiv possesses natural leadership instincts, but has distanced herself from the family business and wields her talent in politics — that is, until Logan dangles the position of Waystar CEO in front of her nose.

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A-L

• Act of True Love: While it turns out to be All for Nothing, and she feels guilty because that means her brother is the choice, Shiv begs her dad for the sacrifice to be not Tom. The fact that it’s such a loss for her, getting more humiliation piled on, only strengthens the act.
• Age-Gap Romance: Sarah Snook's and Matthew MacFayden’s age difference is thirteen years, and it’s stated in the pilot script that it’s a definite factor in their characters' relationship.
• The Alcoholic: None of her family are exactly clean from drowning (or drugging up) their sorrows, but she can often be seen just chugging down wine after getting bad news.
• All Girls Like Ponies: Her credits placeholder shows her cuddling a pony and walking it along.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Hinted at as something that gave her a bad time in the past, as Nate tells her she should be with an exciting bastard, and she shoots back that she tried playing with him. She married Tom because she was so desperate for safety, and to control someone who wouldn’t hurt her like her father has.
• All Take and No Give: The essence of her relationship with Tom. She bullies, belittles, and insults him, expects him to go along with whatever she wants, cheats on him...the biggest example is asking him to agree to an open marriage on their wedding night. It makes her Act of True Love (detailed above) all the more startling.
• Ambiguously Bi: Shiv appears to have arranged and is willing if not eager to engage in a threesome with another woman, and is even happy to have sex with that woman while Tom watches.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: When Tom tells her he does love her despite “love being bullshit”, she’s almost angry that she loves him too and furiously starts making out with him while crying.
• Asshole Victim: In Season Three. Logan strings her along and humiliates her, echoing what he did to Kendall last season, while her brothers do shit like play “Rape Me” by Nirvana when she’s giving a speech, and Caroline openly says she didn’t want children, but she takes all this and hurts Tom even more, leaving him to backstab her and her siblings in the finale.
• Authority in Name Only: Runs into it in “Lion in the Meadow” where she gets to play boss, but Tom feels emasculated taking orders from her, Karl runs to her dad so he can rip into her and she has to play nice with Ravenhead, a fascist she hates.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • While she's often casually cruel and/or dismissive towards Tom, she does defend him from Logan at the cost of losing Logan's respect.
  • She really does love her brothers, siding with them against her dad in the Season Three finale. The only glimmers of maternal instinct she has is when she’s trying to tell Roman that she genuinely supports him, or when Kendall actually admits he’s in a bad way and she’s willing to look after him.
• Bad Liar: When Tom asks her if she's cheating on him, she stutters and can't look him in the eye, making it obvious she's lying.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Not willingly or happily by any chance, but considering how Shiv views her parents, it's twistedly marked how she ends the show unhappily married to the eventual Waystar CEO (Tom), not unlike how Caroline was to Logan.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: She’s close to tears any time Logan is kind to her, and he knows it, telling her to remember this “slant of light”.
• Being Evil Sucks: She admits to Nate that she would love to wake up in the morning and not feel like a massive piece of shit. She hates herself for getting the craved for kiss from daddy after silencing Kiera, and when forced to be in the family picture with Mencken (effectively destroying any chance for going back to a political career), she walks like she’s heading for execution.
• Berserker Tears: While Roman is crying on the floor after their parents fuck them over, and after she’s seen that Tom betrayed them, she tries to go where nobody can see her so she can angrily cry.
• Big Brother Worship: She hides it better than Roman, and is only mostly looking after Kendall than the other way round, but if she’s exhausted all other options, she’ll run to him for comfort (and clearly thinks asking if they can actually talk will work), like after being humiliated by Lisa and the rest of her family, or crying on the phone after Logan’s stroke.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: She has a high opinion of herself both personally and professionally, and frequently taunts her lover with the reminder of how out of his league she was. However, she's just as insecure for a relationship with Logan as the rest of her siblings and does feel guilty for cheating on Tom after he realizes the truth.
• Break the Haughty: While always a Broken Bird more vulnerable than she wants to be, she goes from being able to call her dad out in Season One to “I do what my dad tells me,” in Season Three. The season finale of the latter has her angry-crying and mocked by Logan for it.
• Broken Bird: Comes from a family where love is conditional and both parents are Never My Fault about how much they’ve damaged their children, with a long history of abuse and misogyny. She feels like she has to be a cutthroat Ice Queen, but she’s desperate for affection and susceptible to getting strung along by Logan.
• Broken Pedestal: Trust in Logan was teetering anyway, but the very likely fact that her father was personally involved in the cruise sexual abuse (and especially when Hugo focuses on Roman wanting reassurance that Logan never touched anyone) breaks her a little.
• Calling the Old Man Out: While Connor really wanted to believe the therapy was real, and Roman mewls that he doesn’t mind that it's a PR stunt, Shiv knows the therapy is fake because Kendall isn’t there, and that’s because she can tell that Logan sent out hit pieces on him falling off the wagon. She’s also the one most likely to bring up shitty little details of what Logan did to them, like when he beat Roman just for ordering lobster.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: The uncomfortable subject mostly being her dad and sexual abuse. “Safe Room” has her disturbed by Tom’s Parental Incest jokes and she swiftly steers the conversation to Ravenhead, and “Too Much Birthday” has her hope that Logan won’t sexually abuse again, gets a Death Glare, and changes the topic.
• Character Tics:
  • She puts her thumb in her mouth and bites it whenever she’s anxious.
  • When she’s really angry or in pain, she sets her jaw and gets a flamingly angry tearful Death Glare. When she finds out Tom betrayed her and her brothers (who are comforting each other and don’t see), she has this look.
  • She has a habit of puckering her lips when she’s trying to push herself to do something she doesn’t want to do.
• The Chew Toy: She is very much a fail-daughter, thinking she can play both sides but ends up with nothing, that she can blackmail her far more experienced godmother, and always loses when she comes up against Marcia.
• Children Are a Waste: Tom is desperate for them to have kids, mainly to tie himself to Shiv (even if he's in prison) and to be one of the Roys, but maybe out of some genuine paternal instinct, too. Shiv is disgusted by the thought of having children and, despite Kendall's attempts to treat her as a sort of mother figure, does not seem maternal at all.
• Children Are Innocent: In contrast to Roman, who still sees himself as a child in competition with other kids and acts out, she’s horrified at Waystar bullying and following children. She also tries to defend herself as a child at 10 or 13 to her mother, but Caroline has none of it.
• Commitment Issues: She has no outline for a healthy relationship, and is afraid of being vulnerable, but instead of actually admitting any of that, she sleeps around and tells Tom on their wedding night that she wants an open relationship.
• The Confidant: For all her hate on her own vulnerability and willingness to knife, she’s probably the most willing to listen to her brothers if they actually tell her something is actually wrong. Kendall will tell her he’s fucked up and needs looking after, and she’ll try to get Roman to see that they really do need to talk.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Between her father Logan and husband Tom at the end of Season 2. She chooses Tom.
• Control Freak: One of the reasons she treats Tom so badly is she needs someone to kick after her father being terrible to her. It also goes back a while, as Connor recalls her having a mini post office when she was small, and she was running around stamping all the mail.
• Cool Aunt: It’s hinted that she has a good relationship with Sophie, as Kendall mentions her specifically getting followed (when it’s both of his children that Waystar is bullying) to get her feeling guilty, and when it’s confirmed as true, she’s horrified.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Shiv is a kicked dog who will end up biting if she’s backed into a corner. She really doesn’t want to do the letter, but emotional abuse from Logan and humiliation from Kendall combine for her to go through with it, telling Roman they all have to do things they don’t want.
• Cowardly Lion: Roman is not wrong when he says she’s scared of both her parents, Caroline even more than Logan, but she’s still willing to make an effort in consistently calling them out, despite how she still can be shocked over how low they sink.
• Daddy's Girl: She nearly cries when Logan tells her she loves her, and is horrified and humiliated when he guides her hand to his crotch, thinking she was Marcia the whole time.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Logan wants her to be this, and while she shares his ability to be cutthroat, she’s still a bit too human to manage it without getting upset, and so ends up as his humiliated little doll instead, made to dress up nice and be forced to accept deals she doesn’t want.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Beyond her abuse as a child and trying to get out of that by moving away and into politics, it’s never been detailed how or why she was “such a mess” when she met Tom, and really needed him. According to Snook and Macfadyen, they’re playing it as she had (implied sexually) abusive boyfriends in the past, and the trauma and loss of control over that is what led to Tom.
• Declaration of Protection: The way she shows love is protection and being as sacrificial as she can manage. Telling Logan that Rhea can have the CEO job is part plotting, but also giving it up because she loves her father; whenever she’s manipulating people in the company, she's doing it to protect Tom; and she tries to look after Kendall, feeling a lot of guilt when it’s him vs Tom for the blood sacrifice.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the “girlboss” character type. Shiv would love to be an Iron Lady in control of everything, but she’s a stunted little girl more emotional than how she wants to be, and she’s a puppet for her abusive father.
• Deer in the Headlights: Her reaction to Logan humiliating her is to either freeze, go off to have a breakdown where nobody can see, or just openly try and pretend everything is fine.
• Desperately Craves Affection: She desperately wants to be acknowledged, told she’s smart and worth something, but she’s only pushed to the front of Waystar when they want a nice female face for the cruise scandals.
• Dissonant Laughter: Her own version of mania comes out in stammering, twitching, pacing frantically, babbling and anxious laughing.
• Distracted by the Sexy: She’s upfront about just being attracted to the actor guy in “Hunting”, and has a little distracted “wow” when feeling his arm.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: After the mess of therapy, and when her sick dad guides her hand to his crotch, she clams up and pretends everything is fine.
• The Dragon: In his efforts to avoid her, but also keep her on the only daughter hook, Logan gets her to do his dirty work for him as punishment for losing her job or getting humiliated.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Pinky, which is Logan's childhood nickname for her. As time goes on, it's used as a way to keep her in line.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She's a Roy through and through, but when her family considers endorsing a literal Nazi out of company interests, she draws the line.
• Everyone Has Standards: In season 3, she attempts to draw the line at Logan endorsing a cryptofascist for President of the United States and attempts to push for her father to endorse Delgado, a moderate Hispanic Republican, instead. It doesn't work.
  • She instantly takes a dislike to Ravenhead and his fanboys because he’s a fascist, while Tom defends with “your dad likes him/fascism is a loaded word”.
  • She's also horrified to learn that Logan has started spying on Kendall's kids after Kendall's betrayal. She initially refuses to believe it and is profoundly disgusted when Roman confirms it.
  • She’s furiously upset about having to talk business matters in the second episode when Logan might die.
  • She’s against Logan buying Pierce because if they own all the news, she wonders where she’ll get her actual news aside from angry young women on twitter.
  • While she ends up doing it, thanks to manipulation from Logan and Kendall being horrible at her press conference, she initially balks at using Kendall’s issues to cut him down, and is clearly anxious when Roman talks a big game in front of Logan about their brother being crazy.
  • As much as she weaponises her own vulnerability over it, she’s pained at the thought of her dad participating in sexual abuse on the cruises, and laughs nervously when there’s an uncomfortable silence after saying she hopes he doesn’t do it again when they all get off scot-free.
• Evil Redhead: Her hair is strawberry blonde and she's very much Daddy's Little Villain.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In season 1, she wears her hair long and curly for a softer, feminine look, but once she starts vying for control of Waystar-Royco, she cuts it into a bob — a favorite among career women everywhere.
• Family Versus Career: Shiv must choose between loyalty to her family or dedication to her job in politics, which puts her in opposition to her family. This ends in the second season, where she quits in order to pursue the position of Logan's successor.
• Fashion Hurts: From season two, she uses power suits and high heels as armor to make her look like a proper businesswoman, but, while she looks great, is regularly uncomfortable and would rather not be wearing said heels.
• Fatal Flaw: All of the male members of her family abuse her desperate desire to be seen and be in control (and not just be another Disposable Woman), Logan stringing her along by calling her the smartest when he was never going to make her CEO, Roman mocking her for one cathartic dance and Kendall drowning her out with Nirvana when she’s giving her press conference.
• Faux Affably Evil: Whenever she partakes in Logan's schemes or manipulates others for her own benefit, Shiv pretends to be either an innocent friend or a undeserving victim, much to the chagrin of those around her.
• Female Misogynist: While she does care about other women and the victims on the cruises, she has no other female friendships and almost every interaction she has with another woman, her dad and misogynistic family legacy looms over.
• Fille Fatale: How she Really Gets Around is a way of dealing for her, with the implication being that she started very young; Tom is grossed out when she casually mentions giving her first handjob on the ghost train (in one of her father’s parks).

• Freudian Excuse: Her close to tears spiel about how love is fake really hurts Tom, but it’s clear she’s taking from experience, especially with how her dad’s love is so conditional that she has been forced to succeed as much as she has to earn it, and knows even that success will never be enough given his misogynistic views. Snook and MacFadyen have also both talked about how she had traumatic/abusive boyfriends before Tom, and how she trusts him to not betray, defile or leave her.
• Freudian Slip: In the Argestes press conferences, she at first calls her dad the dinosaur that needs to be culled before correcting it to “dinosaur attitudes”.
• The Gadfly: Shares it with Roman, as at the double date dinner at Vaulter they have a good giggle at Tom having bad taste in suits and trying too hard.
• Granola Girl: She’s fundamentally a right-leaning centrist, but is this trope in comparison with the rest of her Republican family. It’s telling that, while mostly concerned with optics and their own gain, she and Kendall are the only ones who express any kind of sympathy with the victims of the cruises, and she doesn’t believe Logan when he says he didn’t sexually abuse anyone.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Even when she knows it’s bad attention, she’s still jealous of Logan spending more time with her brothers than her.
• Hates Their Parent: There’s not a single mother figure in the show that she gets on with. Given how Caroline is, it’s probably fair enough.
• Heroic BSoD: At the end of “All the Bells Say”, her mother has denied all responsibility for abuse, her father screwed them over, her husband betrayed her, her brothers were and are having breakdowns; no wonder she's on the edge of Berserker Tears.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: Shiv suffers from a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease, a desperate need to be acknowledged and told she’s smart, and wants so badly to be not another disposable woman that if you promise to protect her, she’ll do anything.
• High-Powered Career Woman: Shiv meets all of the qualifications: she's bitingly sarcastic, emotionally closed off, and just as ambitious as her siblings to become the successor of her father's media empire. It is clear that Logan refuses to truly consider her as a future successor because she is a woman, something that both Kendall and Roman outright mock her for at different points in the series. She also has a strained relationship with her boyfriend, later Henpecked Husband, Tom, who she seems ambivalent at best as to whether or not she genuinely loves him. The only thing keeping her from being a fully straight example is that, unlike most examples of this trope, Shiv is genuinely not the most competent businesswoman and has rather poor business sense, due to a lack of experience and people skill, making her confidence and determination come off more as foolish arrogance and self-righteousness.
• Hollywood Atheist: She tells Nate there’s no God or anything, just people in rooms trying to be happy, but it’s just her trying to justify both her cheating and depression.
• Hope Is Scary: Logan has a rare father moment of looking concerned when she acts like there’s no hope for the company, conveniently forgetting that her feeling that way might have something to do with how he treats her.
• Humiliation Conga: The essence of her storyline throughout Season Two. Season Three continues it, to the point where even Kendall realises she’s now in his forced-dutiful place from the second season.
• Hypocrite:
  • She is a feminist of the "Lean In" variety, and an ostensible Democrat who will use her connections within the right-wing machine for her own gain.
  • She also seems to look down on her brothers for their reliance on their father and desire for his approval, but it's made repeatedly clear that Shiv wouldn't have achieved what she has without the family name and that she's just as desperate for his approval as they are.
  • While she pressures an openly uncomfortable Tom into an open marriage and readily uses that to sleep with other men, she browbeats Tom into backing out of sleeping with another woman at a party, and later admits that the thought of Tom sleeping with other people upsets her.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: When Tom is insulted by anyone else but her, she gets upset and defends him.
• Hysterical Woman: If she deviates just slightly from her Ice Queen persona then she’s dismissed as some overly emotional woman. What’s worse is Kendall mansplaining once that she’s getting too emotional, just a couple of weeks after he’d cried on her.
• I Did What I Had to Do: She would love to wake up in the morning and not feel like a piece of shit, but shoves down her own guilt by calling her bad actions what she had to do to make it in the world.
• The Dog Bites Back: After getting humiliated by her in “Return”, she, Kendall, and Roman dig their claws into Rhea, bringing up their dad’s dead sister and making it look like she’s an alcoholic socialist.
• Ice Queen: Partly self-imposed, partly forced on her, but while her brothers can fall apart, she has to stand firm and can’t let herself break.
• Ignored Epiphany: She knows full well that her dad isn’t to be trusted, and has broken her brothers, and will never give her what she wants, but still desperately needs that promise of affection, and has deluded herself that she can withstand him kicking her for years.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Not that she’d ever admit it, but she invites herself along to Wila’s cast party, invites girl Sandy on the board to have another underappreciated daughter around, and gets weird and needy with Lisa.
• Important Haircut: Along with her wardrobe looking ten times more expensive and uncomfortable, the messy long hair in season one gets cut into a Power Hair bob in season two. Other than Roman being his usual brand of snide, nobody pays attention to it.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: As per her having not much in her life except her job, she spends her midnight downtime re-reading documents and wanting to talk to her dad about work.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Her villainy is mostly relegated to projecting onto rape victims, trying to kill women close to her dad, lashing out at her husband and squabbling with her brothers. She has Logan’s cutthroat instincts, but none of his tendencies to actually win at anything.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Underneath the career woman, self-confident, boss bitch persona that she both is and puts on, she craves her father’s approval, has had no blueprints for healthy relationships, and finds being vulnerable traumatic.
• Innocence Lost: She tries more than once to defend herself at 13/15 as a child, not that it seems to matter to her mother or siblings, and there appears to be a line in her mind between innocent child and fucked up adult.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Has her dad’s eyes, but no matter how much she tries to keep the rest of her face all Ice Queen, they’ll give it away that she’s trying not to cry.
• In-Series Nickname: Logan calls her "Pinky". Meanwhile her brothers will use “Shivvy” when they’re being patronising, though at certain points they use "Pinky" as well ("Will Pinky play?").
• Insistent Terminology: She insists she quit from Gil’s campaign, but everyone knows she was actually fired.
• In-Universe Catharsis: Part of the reason why she works for Gil is that it's cathartic to get paid hearing her dad be called awful over and over.
• Iron Lady: Sarah Snook has talked about how Shiv feels like she has to discard emotion (but can indeed be gentle) and focus on the business side of things, especially compared to Roman and Kendall who collapse more easily.
  Snook: She chose to take a different path just to protect herself, as she’s seen what it’s done to her brothers.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She can be as cruel to her brothers as they are to her, looks out for herself and lashes out at Tom constantly, while paying off rape victims and is a right-leaning centrist. But she’s exceedingly gentle with Kendall when he admits to suffering and protects Roman when he’s backhanded by Logan, begs her dad to protect Tom despite how badly she needs his approval, and she does genuinely want the company to change for the better.
• "Just Joking" Justification: A big fan of being horrible and couching it like a joke (especially to Tom), all the while saying she’s not actually like her dad.
• Kick the Dog: She and Kendall destroy each other in “The Disruption”, him humiliating her at her press conference and making her run off to cry, while she airs out every personal issue he had (something she didn’t really want to do before he kicked and Logan manipulated her) and makes him run off to hug his knees like a little kid.
• Lady in a Power Suit: Her look in Season 2; see Significant Wardrobe Shift, below.
• Large Ham: Not most of the time, but Shiv has a habit of making exaggerated facial expressions, often to mock others.
• Like Father, Like Son: She’s inherited her father’s cunning and ability to gaslight, not always enjoying it like he seems to, but telling herself it’s also what she has to do.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Unlike both her parents who are overbearing and zero empathy, give her something to fix and she’ll try to help, as well as giving you a choice if you want to talk or not.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She’s not lying when she says she needs Tom, them having met when she was a mess, she just also treats him badly because she assumes he’ll always be there.
• Locked Out of the Loop: As Logan actually has no interest in her taking over in Season Two, she only finds about shit in the company long after everyone else. She tells Kendall and Roman that she didn’t know about cruises because she was a child, and they refuse to believe her.
• Lonely at the Top: Logan likes to make her think she’s got more power than he does, while also making sure she has very little support system so that she needs him.
• Love Is a Weakness:
  • Not wanting to lose Tom, Shiv begs Logan to not let him take the fall for the cruises scandal. This makes Logan quietly dismiss her as a potential successor due to her siding with her husband over family and it doesn't even seem to have that much of an effect on Tom as it is.
  • The basis of her tearful confession to Tom on their wedding night, as she associates love with fear, jealousy, revenge and control, and it’s covered up in really nice wrapping paper “but when you open it up it’s…”
• Love Martyr: She’s probably the one most aware of what her childhood was like, and moved to DC in large part to escape, but that doesn’t mean she still won’t take any scrap of affection or promise of being acknowledged she can from her father.

M-Y

• Mama Bear: She’s his younger sister, but Kendall still pleads with her to look after him anyway in season two, as he’s defined himself by being of use to his dad. She’s also just as fast to protect Roman after Logan smacks him so hard he loses a tooth, and tells them both in the Season Three finale that they actually need to talk about the abuse shit instead of lashing out at each other.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: She is definitely the one wearing the pants in her relationship with Tom. Also has this dynamic with Roman, especially in “The Disruption”, as Logan gets angry at his daughter for not saying nice things about him, and calls his son a faggot for doing Shiv’s role.
• Meaningful Name: Her nickname, while not a bad way to shorten "Siobhan," reflect that she can be a weapon when she needs to be. She lives up to it with devastating effect in the series finale, when she betrays Kendall in the most vicious way possible and votes for Tom as Waystar's new CEO.
• Mirror Character: All the Roys, in some ways, are mirrors to each other, but Shiv is her dad’s only daughter (which neither he or her brothers let her forget) while Kendall is his dad’s number one boy (who in Logan’s eyes, has failed in his gender) and they have similar story arcs. Sarah Snook said herself Shiv is a mirror to both Logan and Kendall.
• Morality Pet: She occasionally acts as a complicated one for Logan, being both the only one to achieve success outside the company and being the only one whose opinion he seems to genuinely care about, being sincerely upset at the idea that she thinks he'd have allowed what was going on at the cruises to go on without doing something. However, Logan still dismisses her as unsuited to take over for him, due to being a woman, and largely seems to believe her only real goal is to give him some acceptable grandchildren.
• Motor Mouth: For someone who learned to be quiet as a survival tactic, she loses it when she’s out of control, pacing, fidgeting and babbling manically on how she fucked up, or Love Is a Weakness, or she can take how much her father kicks her.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She feels a lot of guilt for asking her dad to put anyone but Tom under the axe, knowing that the only choice left is Kendall, who she promised to look after. She even tries to apologize in her own way when they next meet up.
• My Secret Pregnancy: Throughout the middle of Season 4, she hides a pregnancy, until she caves and reveals it to everyone.
• Narcissist: Much like Kendall, Logan, and Caroline, Shiv has a massive, yet incredibly fragile ego that she fuels by putting down those around her (especially Tom) and flaunting her own inflated sense of self-worth.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: As Marcia viciously notes, Shiv would not have gotten as far in life without her father's name and resources. It also puts her in a bind, because she wants to be free from the company and the family name, but her political career is in big part down to her famous last name.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Part of the reason why she tightens up so much and never lets anyone in is that she knows full well how much trauma her family life entails, and would much rather keep control than the other way round.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While the "hero" part is debatable, Shiv destroys her own advantage over her brothers when she quits/is fired from Gil's campaign. Having just promised her the top job, Logan seems to lose any interest in her immediately and she ends up getting humiliated continuously throughout Season 2 and 3.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: She is an amalgamation of Ivanka Trump and Elisabeth Murdoch, the latter of whom apparently has seen and enjoyed the show.
• No-Respect Guy: She tells Karl what to do, as his boss, and he immediately calls Logan, who rips her to shreds over the phone. She also gets a win at the shareholder’s meeting but gets yelled at, and is forced to accept a presidential candidate who is politically a Neo-Nazi.
• Not So Above It All:
  • As a person with a career outside Waystar-Royco, she is at first removed from the family drama, but quickly proves herself to be as eager to succeed Logan as her brothers.
  • As much as she mocks the others for self-destruction, she fucks up multiple opportunities all on her own.
  • During Kendall's birthday party in Season 3, Shiv can't help but take off her shoes and breakdance to Dizzee Rascal while in the middle of a crowded dance floor.
• Not So Stoic:
  • She's usually trying to be an Ice Queen, which makes it even more jarring when she begs Logan not to let Tom take the fall for the cruise ship scandal. She's also close to tears any time her dad says he loves her.
  • When Logan has a brain haemorrhage, she’s visibly relieved to get hold of Kendall, and apologises for crying on the phone to him.
  • She doesn’t even try to pretend that she’s okay after Logan yells at her that she’s a traitorous coward who is only marrying a man who she doesn’t think will betray her.
  • While she mostly tries to spar with her mom and cover that it’s upsetting, she asks her honestly to stop going around to people asking how long they give the marriage because it’s horrible, and gets a Hurricane of Excuses. It’s only then that she offers to meet up with her brothers and have a giggly joint like old times.
  • When she’s telling Tom she cheated and thought she’d told him and that Love Is a Weakness, she looks and sounds seconds away from bursting into tears.
  • Twice in “The Summer Palace” that she breaks, admitting that she doesn’t think she can face Kendall after he backed out of the deal, and crying when Logan offers to make her CEO. When she’s reassured that it’s “real”, she’s very close to outright squeeing.
  • Even before Kendall tells her his life is over except for serving their dad, she’s near tears because she knows full well her brother isn’t okay.
  Shiv: Fucking look at me.
  • When Kendall goes public with the abuse, she looks young and afraid at her father, continuing in season three to essentially beg him to deny that he wasn’t personally involved in sexual abuse, and he can’t even manage that.
• Obviously Not Fine: As much as she pretends she’s okay and stoic, there are tears in her eyes almost any time she interacts with her father. She’s also on the edge of tears talking to Keira, saying if she comes forward, she’ll be ripped apart.
• Office Lady: She’s not, but she’s treated like one. Tom makes loud jokes about her being a hot intern, Kendall lashes out that her only value is her “teats”, and Roman continues the squick by saying when he’s in charge he’ll get her to be his Sexy Secretary.
• One of the Boys: Which doesn’t work out for her in the real world, as a joke about wanting sanitiser after Gil shaking hands with someone on the street gets her fired.
• Only Friend: They can be nasty (and misogynistic) to her too, as she is to them, and they’ve all been raised as attack dogs, but the only people she can really show her soft side to are her brothers.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Very rarely will she be called her given name Siobhan.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • She usually tries to hide her feelings, saving them for when she’s alone, but can’t take it anymore when her father is browbeating her for being a coward and marrying a man who she thinks is beneath her, and starts crying before she can run off.
  • When her family seriously considers voting in a fascist during "What It Takes", she gets more and more upset as Mencken is dangerous. Unfortunately, her emotions running higher means they dismiss her as a Hysterical Woman, despite how she’s the only one who knows what she’s talking about.
• Parental Favoritism: Very downplayed since this is Logan we're talking about but he does seem to have some respect for her intellect and the fact that she has tried to make her own way and he is also sincerely hurt at the idea that she thinks he was involved in the scandal at the Cruise line. That being said, Logan's sexism also means he dismisses her as a choice for his successor and seems to only care about her ability to give him grandchildren, and comes down harder on her for mistakes than he does for Roman or even Kendall.
• Parental Substitute: Kendall asks her to take care of him because he knows neither of his parents will, and they both agree that Dad can do whatever he wants except hit Roman. As the only girl in the family, Caroline being absent even when she was there, Logan will expect her to play as a babysitter for all her brothers.
• Pet the Dog:
  • While not enough to actually comfort the pilot kid after, she tells Roman to not be an asshole toying with him, and she's disgusted at the thought of Waystar spying on Kendall's kids.
  • She's angry at her dad in Season One for breaking her older brothers, and calls him on planting stories that Kendall is out getting high after being fired.
  • As much as she hates ATN, and watches her news elsewhere, she drags her feet on destroying it because Tom might get caught up in collateral damage, and when trying to blackmail Gerri, wants him protected.
  • As soon as she’s alone with Tom after the takeover news, her first thought is that as he’s in on merit, he’ll be okay.
  • He doesn’t quite believe it and she’s on her own hook later, but she shares a sweet moment with Roman where she wishes him luck on being the only one left to become CEO.
  • As embarrassed as Roman is hearing it, she thinks Kendall is being Easily Forgiven and responds with anger on Roman’s behalf, saying he got beat with a slipper until he cried for ordering expensive food.
  • She admits to Kendall that she’s always liked Vaulter, and has another go at trying to talk to him about what the hell is going on with him and their dad.
  • She's quite understandably pissed at Kendall over his attempts to take over the company, but when he breaks down crying and hugs her, her sarcasm fades when she realizes something's actually wrong with him, and she tries to comfort her brother. In the season three finale after learning he tried to commit suicide, she's nothing but gentle with him.
  • After being an awful wife to him, when Tom finally stands up for himself, she realizes just how bad she's been towards her husband, and begs Logan to spare him the fate of being the Cruise Scandal's scapegoat, even though she's aware it hurts her chances of leading the company in the future.
  • It ends up being thrown back at her face because Kendall still has the instinct to defend Logan, but she tries to tell her brother that Logan making him the sacrifice was cold, also the nearest she gets to apologising for something she did.
• Pinocchio Nose: When she’s full-on lying, especially to Tom, she starts to stutter along with being obviously evasive, so of course he knows she’s bullshitting but doesn’t want to bring it up.
• Playing Both Sides: Tries and fails in “Vaulter” to be on both her dad’s and Gil’s side, but she has a tantrum when Gil calls her out for the classism, and Logan loses interest in her, so she ends up with nothing.
• Playing Hard to Get: Joked about in “Argestes” (during a conference to try and deal with a sex abuse scandal mind you) that she’s hard to get when she’s well-known to really get around. Kendall carries it on, admitting he’s easy and Roman just doesn’t say anything.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: The pattern of Shiv and Tom's relationship. For all the horrible stuff she does, if she thinks he's going to leave her, she will actually be prepared to sacrifice for him. Her behavior with Nate suggests this is a recurring theme for her.
• Plucky Office Girl: She genuinely wants to change Waystar for the better (like Tom says, she’s “Mary Poppins with a hard on”) but gets treated as a silly girl intern. While she’s in over her head, the misogyny in which her brothers and father mock her manifesto in “Return” is obvious.
• Power Dynamics Kink: She gets very uncomfortable when Tom makes the first move, and would rather dominate. When she comes back from her mother telling her she shouldn’t have been born, she asks Tom that he can say or do anything he wants to her, showing this whole thing comes from an incredibly unhealthy place.
• Power is Sexy: Her own power, rather. When she has to think about betraying her father to go work for Gil, she tells Nate to shut up and sticks his hand down her pants.
• The Proud Elite: Everyone in her family is an elitist asshole, but her “joking” that Gil might want to sanitise his hand after shaking the hand of a “prole” is what gets her fired.
• Psychological Projection: With both Kiera and Gerri, she tells them essentially the same thing, that it’s best to keep quiet about your sexual abuse/harassment and try to sort it out yourself, the implication being that she’s gone through something like this in the past and kept her mouth shut about it.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: She asks Kendall with sad eyes and a pout to go over to their dad’s, and he immediately gives in.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Sure, Shiv backed the winning side in the GoJo takeover and is the only Roy sibling anywhere close to the seat of power at the end of the series. But now she's trapped in a loveless marriage as the Trophy Wife to Tom, who is really only Matsson's Puppet King. And considering how the vote went down, it's unlikely she will be on speaking terms with Kendall anytime soon, if ever.
• The Quiet One: In her childhood, with Gerri adding in that she Used to Be a Sweet Kid. She watched her siblings have to be fighting attack dogs for their dad and plotted her way out, “surviving” by being quiet and never getting in the pool with Logan's friends.
• Rape as Backstory: Like her siblings, heavily implied. It’s actor canon that she’s had sexually abusive boyfriends before, comes back from her mother admitting she never wanting kids to being manically horny and telling Tom he can do anything he wants to her, is enmeshed with her dad to the point of being compared several times to a girl with a crush and compared with the victims from cruises, reacts anxiously to Mo, knew even when she was young (and alone) to avoid the wolf pack like the plague (Logan obliquely threatens her with he shouldn’t have protected her from them anyway), and she projects heavily with both Kiera and Gerri about keeping sexual harassment to yourself.
• Really Gets Around: She cheats on Tom and then negotiates an open marriage with him. (Tom is not enthused). It's heavily implied to be her main way of dealing with trauma.
• Real Men Hate Affection: She’ll give plenty of affection in her own way, but Logan’s way of thinking has affected her brain, making cracks at Roman (who’s also playing daddy, making sexualising comments at her) showing affection to Caroline that he must want to fuck her.
• Replacement Goldfish: Her Humiliation Conga in season three echoes Kendall being beaten down in the second season (she even says “I just do what my dad tells me”), which he at least recognises and feels sympathy for. As for Shiv’s POV on the whole thing (aside from the fact that she has no clue what Kendall is talking about), she tells herself she can make it work for her, when she really can’t. It’s also heavily implied that this has always been on some level the dynamic, her being the number one girl if Kendall ever escapes, but being tossed again when he comes back.
• Rich Kid Turned Social Activist: The image she wants to portray, and she genuinely turned to politics to try and get away from her family, but she’s still a centrist who wants to keep her money, and finds a class war “jejune”.
• The Scapegoat: While Kendall might have been the sacrifice, it’s not even just her dad that uses her as a face for the sexual abuses scandal, all her brothers are convinced that she always knew about it, even though she was 15 at the time.
• Selective Obliviousness: According to Sarah, Shiv knows about and tries to ignore Tom being awful to Greg, just being glad that (for the most part), she got the nice soft side.
• Self-Serving Memory: She and her mother have starkly different memories of whether Shiv "chose" her father over Caroline in the divorce, and how old Shiv was when this occurred. Given that both characters are quite selfish and tend toward unreliable narration, it's left ambiguous who (if anyone) is the more accurate storyteller.
• Sex for Solace: In rare moments of vulnerability, she admits that she hooked up with Tom because she felt terrible and needed him. It’s a common theme for her, hooking up with one of Willa’s acting friends after lying that she’s happy and has everything she could want.
• Sexy Secretary: While trying to be Logan (who did the same thing to Kendall in season two, and wants him chained down doing mail), Roman creeps Shiv out by saying when he takes over, he’ll put her in the office next to her and make her into this.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In Season 1, she wears slouchy sweaters and pants in soft colors, because she wants to be seen as an individual outside her family's influence. In Season 2, where she starts vying for leadership of Waystar, her wardrobe is monochromatic and comprised of turtlenecks and button-downs — she wants to be seen as powerful and business-savvy.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Her reaction Nate and Tom's backing Gil Eavis out of a sincere belief in his campaign and her general view of anyone who doesn't want to use dirty tricks to get ahead.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Her explanation for dating and eventually marrying Tom is that he's "a good guy". That's all she can say about him, though she does genuinely feel safe with him.
• Small Name, Big Ego: She tends to carry herself like she's a strategic and executive genius who can run intellectual circles around her brothers when a good portion of her rep has been built on relatively easy victories with one character noting that getting Democratic politicians elected in a major blue state like New York is not exactly the most impressive political achievement and others have made a point of telling her she wouldn't have made it as far as she has if not for her family name.
• The Smurfette Principle: She is not the only female character among the main cast, but she is the only female Roy child and the only woman present in the promotional materials.
• Soapbox Sadie: As the only Democrat in a family of Republicans, this is very relative. Roman still whines that she used to be “fun” before she “went all PC”.
• Straw Nihilist: Often makes passing statements about there being no God and nothing being “real”… usually to justify her cheating on Tom. She even proposed the open marriage using this argument that “love” as it is portrayed doesn’t really exist, and her first association with it is "fear".
• Stepford Smiler: As Mark Mylod puts it, she uses all her strength to keep on the Teflon coat and tries to deny how much pain and anger she has.
• Stepford Snarker: She has a mini competition with Roman about who is doing best in therapy, despite how both of them are deeply screwed up.
• Sucks at Dancing: In a Shout-Out to Elaine Benes from Seinfeld, she lets loose for once and shows off her lack of dancing skills at Kendall’s 40th.
• Territorial Smurfette: Logan is either ignoring her or treating her like daddy’s princess, neither of which she particularly enjoys, but attention is at least better than nothing, so she’s jealous of any other woman who gets near.
• Token Good Teammate: Subverted. Shiv thinks of herself this way, as the only Democrat in a family of Republicans, and occasionally tries to pull them towards doing the right thing, but she’s just as manipulative and elitist as the rest of them.
• Token Minority: As the only Roy woman, she’s used as the face of the company when the cruise scandal goes public.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Partly because it’s so often used against her, she doesn’t have much use for femininity beyond something she can use with other women, and Logan regularly complains that she’s supposed to be the Daddy's Girl complimenting him in public. Even her fashion sense is put on, dressing the best as a sign of wealth and armor around other people, but always in casual slouchy clothes on her own.
• Too Clever by Half: She thinks she can play everyone, keep all the plates spinning, but it ends up crashing down around her, mostly by a Not So Above It All talent for self-sabotage.
• Too Kinky to Torture: What she tells herself, bragging to Tom that Logan can kick her as often as he wants, she can withstand it and fight everyone to keep her place.
• Tragic Dream:
  • She tried to be outside of the family, make her own pile as Logan shouted at all of them in the season three finale, but her need for approval and need for control got her right back in, and with having to be in the picture with the family giving their support to a fascist, can never actually go back.
  • She wants to be CEO, both for the power and influence, but also to finally gain her father's respect and love, and to prove her worth to the world. Both she and the audience slowly realize that, no matter what Logan promised about making her his successor, it was never, ever going to be her, no matter what she did, due to the simple fact that she is a woman. No matter how well she does, or how much her brothers fuck up, or how many fires Shiv puts out, the best she can ever hope for is to be the one doing things behind the scenes while some guy who can cast her aside at any time takes the credit. She thinks she has a real shot in Season Four when she aligns with Mattson and he seems open to the idea of making her CEO, but he immediately double-crosses her for Tom, and even he only gets to be Mattson's Puppet King.
• Trauma Button:
  • After Iverson gets hit by Logan in front of everyone, she tosses and turns in her sleep (accidentally hitting Tom that he spins later as a kink thing), and the audience would find out later that Roman was often hit because Logan was mad at her.
  • Gil Eavis yelling at her makes her instinctively lower her eyes and tell him softly that in the end she'll do whatever he wants.
  • When her press conference is drowned out by the sounds of Nirvana’s “Rape Me”, she has a mini panic attack, but later lies through her teeth to Ravenwood that she doesn’t get embarrassed, Sarah confirmed it as Shiv being sent back to childhood trauma and Logan humiliating her in public.
  • In the original “All The Bells Say” script ^note the show takes everything out that’s “too obvious”, she outright admits that Kendall trying to be boss/dad triggers her.
• Trophy Wife:
  • The extra gendered humiliation of her being a Replacement Goldfish for Kendall, Logan really wants to both ignore her and have her dressed up looking pretty saying lots of nice things about him, parading her around like a trophy.
  • What she ends up as. Tom is CEO, and they're back together, but she has no actual power, is just close to it, and when he tells her to wait in the car she does so.
• Troubled Abuser: Roman mocks her for pretending to care about other people because nobody cares about her, and she, out of everyone, will mostly respond to abuse from her parents by clamming up and being horrible to someone else.
• Troubled Fetal Position: As she finds out more of the sexual abuse her father and company have taken part in, and the fact that there’s very little difference between her and those women, she curls up in on herself and makes herself smaller, in stark contrast to how ramrod straight her posture usually is.
• Trying Not to Cry: Mirror Character to Kendall that she is, she spends half of her time with shimmering eyes (especially when Logan power plays not coming to her wedding) but forcing herself to not cry, as then she’d be taken even less seriously by everyone.
• Turn Out Like His Father: In the end, Shiv ends up in a situation just like her mother, trapped in a loveless marriage to a man she shares a mutual disdain for and in a position where she is nothing but a trophy wife and expecting a child she doesn't want.
• Unconfessed Unemployment: Connor and Logan treat her like a loser in need of pity after getting fired from Gil, and she refuses to admit she didn’t quit.
• The Un-Favourite: She gets the worst of it from her mother, as Caroline will find her when she’s in a bad place and just start carving, tells her to her face she’s a shitty daughter, and Shiv has her wedding in England just to appease her mom.
• The Unfettered: She'll do anything to make her candidate win, and to be on the winning side in general. Despite being ostensibly liberal, she isn't afraid to use her name to try to get a news station to sink a negative story about her candidate. She then abandons said candidate for being too "safe" (that is, boring) and then gets behind Gil, getting him to put aside his principles for a compromise with Logan (which she secured via blackmail); this makes her lover aghast, as he's backing Gil out of sincere belief, and she mocks him for his idealism.
• Uptown Girl: Shiv is this to Tom, a fact that characters repeatedly use to stick a thorn in his side. The series drives this home by having Tom humiliate Shiv's lover at their wedding as this song plays in the background.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to Gerri.
• Wardrobe Flaw Of Characterisation: As gorgeous as her clothes are, she’s more comfortable in androgynous fits than formal wear, and those dresses are always slightly wrong for the occasion, showing off what she thinks she should wear as a woman and not really knowing what’s correct.
• Weakness Turns Her On: Whenever Tom tries to be all alpha and make the first move, she’s turned off at best, openly nervous at worst.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: A rare female variant and as such, this trope is played with. She starts the show as an outsider by choice and puts up a strong front that she is above seeking her father's approval. But Season 2, in which she re-enters the company to vie for the CEO position, makes it very clear that she is not, to disastrous effect for her.
  • You can even read her initial distance from the inner circle in Season 1 as a tacit acknowledgement that she is likely to never get the approval she so seeks from Logan, so she removed herself as a form of self-preservation. Too bad it didn't stick.
  • She admits to Rhea that she's frustrated with herself for being at the point where what her dad thinks is her entire universe.
  • She admits that her mother can always make her cry and moves the wedding to England just to appease her.
• We Used to Be Friends: Downplayed as they still love each other, and she tries to take care of him, but in “Safe Room”, Shiv is heartbroken at the fact that Kendall can’t talk to her like they’ve clearly used to in the past.
• What Does She See in Him?: Deconstructed. People openly wonder this about Shiv and Tom, as she's a billionaire and Logan Roy's only daughter, while Tom is "only" upper middle-class, and somewhat dorky. However, it becomes clear that this dynamic appeals to Shiv because it allows her to mistreat Tom whenever she wants, while he continues to adore her.
• White Sheep: She thinks she is one, being a progressive-minded liberal in a family of hardcore conservatives, but she isn't anywhere near as virtuous as she would like to appear.
• Womanchild: Might hide it better than her brothers, but she regresses just as bad when it's time for her father's approval, and acts jealous of Marcia for having his attention.
• Woman Of Wealth And Taste: Most members of her family are either bad or boring dressers, and Shiv is the only Roy who is considered something of a style icon within the family
• Women Are Wiser: She is the most conventionally intelligent and put-together of all the Roy children, and initially finds success in a career outside of the family business. However, her ambition pulls her right back under Logan's thumb.
• Wounded Gazelle Warcry: She’s a Bad Liar, but can weaponise her own fears and vulnerability for what she wants out of someone, hating herself after but justifying it as I Did What I Had to Do.
• Workaholic: She and Tom have a little “I want to abandon our honeymoon for work but only if you want to as well” exchange… on the first day of it.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: As part of her Humiliation Conga in season two, she knows deep down full well that Logan is awful and burned his way through Kendall and Roman, but lets him manipulate her due to the mistaken belief that she’s stronger and better than her brothers.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Logan gives Shiv a kiss on the cheek for getting a sexual assault victim to back out. For once, getting her dad’s love doesn’t make her happy.

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