From 2018-2023, millions of viewers sat at home and watched the brothers and sisters of Succession duke it out over who would ultimately succeed in leading the family business. There’s something so satisfying about witnessing how the lives of the rich, powerful, and successful are sometimes way worse than our middle-class ones. When you have so much to gain, you have so much more to crash out on than if you came from nothing. 

There’s a lot that goes into choosing an heir to a fortune. You don’t want to leave millions of dollars with a fully grown delinquent who will waste it. But at the same time, many ultra-wealthy people don’t choose an heir based on who is the most qualified. If that were the case, we’d have a Queen Anne right now. Instead, they use superficial markers like gender and age (favoring the elder and male) to decide.