For someone looking from the outside, the Roy family seemed as put together as any other precocious and morally ambiguous family did. A family who fought at each others throats like wild dogs.
Though once Matilda got close enough to the Roy's to pee...
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"If anyone had tried to tell me that my daughter would rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous I would have told them they're dreaming! But look at her, isn't she just so beautiful?" Matilda's mother Christine cooed, holding a magazine up to show the table.
Her family been talking about it all night over Thanksgiving dinner, living vicariously through the 'luxurious' lifestyle Tilly was now apparently living. Her aunts begged for gossip about the Roy family, about what they were like in person. Her younger cousins asked about the parties she was invited to, whether she had met any celebrities or artists. It was exhausting, answering their endless questions about her 'big move' to New York.
She placed her knife and fork together on her empty plate, sighing to herself quietly as she realised that all of their questions were about other people; that nobody asked her anything about her. It was her career after all. Her move to New York. It was her getting the invites to galas, wearing expensive clothes and being introduced to Logan Roy. It was her doing all of these things, yet they didn't seem to care.
Her family wasn't drowning in wealth like the Roy's, they came from humble upbringings and worked hard for the lives they lived. They were financially comfortable though, a solid happy medium in the rich to poor scale. Her mother was a university lecturer specialising in classical piano and orchestra, her father a successful politician. Despite being highly intellectual people, they never credited their only child with the successes she had earned in her life. They assumed that because she was their offspring, she was destined for greatness - that her success was a given. They raised her in a household that didn't congratulate her for winning a race because first place was expected. A household that belittled her intelligence and academic competence if she were to lose.
She was raised by parents that never thought she was good enough, no matter how hard she tried.
"Matilda darling, can you please clear the dishes?" Her mother asked politely, excusing herself from the table to go into the kitchen.
Tilly did as she was told without hesitation. Even at 28 she was scared of her mother.
The family pivoted their conversation to some of Tilly's other cousins, asking them about their lives and what they'd been up to since last time they caught up. She listened quietly as she collected their used plates and offered to top up their wine. Comparative to her, the cousins were unremarkable, mundane and lacking any sort of achievement - but her father showed far more interest in their lives than in her.
One cousin had been accepted into Howard for college, Tilly went to Yale. Another cousin just got her first job at age 20, Tilly was 15. Another cousin? He just graduated with a fucking arts degree that could have been framed and sitting on their fucking fireplace given her parents reaction. Her business degree in which she graduated summa cum laude? God knows, she figured it was probably at the bottom of a box in storage.
