Misc. headcanons: Connor Roy ➜ Maternal line & 'parentification'
content warning: discussion of mental health, abuse, suicide
Connor's mother was Julia, youngest child of Roger Martin, a telecommunications mogul based in Massachusetts. Today the Martins are a footnote in broadcasting history, but at the time Logan met Julia, theirs was a well-established company dating back to the 1910s. Logan and Julia's attraction was initially genuine but their relationship mostly made a kind of serendipitous business sense. The Martins provided broadcasting infrastructure and Logan intended to fill the airwaves.
Julia, never especially business-minded, regarded her family's wealth as a means to support her passion for the arts. She was a sheltered but mostly sweet and well-meaning socialite who delighted (at first) in permanently relocating to New York after marriage, because it meant she got to hang with the trendy artistic crowd, playing benefactor for poets and galleries.
Some of Julia's qualities that made her attractive to Logan—'flightiness', an offbeat charm and an ability to soldier through conversing with strangers no matter what—came from her loving upbringing, but also from what would be recognised today as ADHD. The traits which made her a social butterfly were just what an austere man like Logan needed to help him navigate America's old-money scene. (These are, of course, the same traits Logan dislikes in Connor, but the irony is lost on him.)
Julia was also prone to depression, exacerbated by Logan's treatment of her and her increasing isolation from her family. When Connor was ten years old and Julia in her early thirties, Julia experienced her first major depressive episode with psychotic symptoms, which eventually saw Logan having her institutionalised. Connor did not see his mother for a year.
When Julia was able to be released, the Martins seized the chance to assume responsibility for her care, arranging divorce from Logan and taking on the bulk of Connor's upbringing. Logan was happy with this arrangement, becoming increasingly consumed with work and, eventually, his second marriage. Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, while Logan was remarrying and having Kendall, Connor had no contact with Logan at all. Subsequently, New York has never fully felt like home to Connor, but then, neither has Massachusetts.
Julia would spend the rest of her life in and out of care, with the mental health provision of the seventies and eighties leaving much to be desired. She experienced delusions of her doctors and relatives meaning her ill, and tended to trust only Connor a little more consistently. Though this time, he would assume the role of carer: bringing her food so she'd trust it enough to eat, sitting with her, helping her dress or reading to her. He also began retreating into an inner fantasy life and voracious reading, mechanisms he'd go on to use all his life.
Connor was in his mid-twenties when Julia died by what might have been a suicide, but was officially a prescription overdose. The Martins' company had long been sold off; today, they exist as a middling old-money dynasty with a comfortable investment portfolio. Just as he is with the Roys, Connor is not fully a Martin. He has a good relationship with some of his cousins and plays Fun Uncle to their kids, but older members of the family blame Connor in part for what happened to Julia, given that his existence served as a constant reminder of Logan and his cruelty. Still, the Martins are much likelier to take Connor up on the offer of visiting him than the Roys.
Connor's involvement with his half-siblings' upbringing was limited to family events and scooping them up where he could for breaks from the Roy household. He wasn't quite a fatherly figure but tends to assume that role with them to this day anyway, because playing the caregiver is what he knows. It's part of the reason he doesn't want children of his own: on a conscious level he believes it's because he doesn't want to risk passing down what his mother suffered from, but on a subconscious level it's because he's sort of "been there, done that" in regards to parenting through his mother and half-siblings.
