The Soprano crime family tree

Johnny Boy Soprano and Livia stand at the top. Johnny Boy, a big shot in the mob, died of natural causes in the late 1980s, so he is dead before the series begins. Livia is the mother of Tony and of Janice.¹ Johnny Boy’s brother is Corrado Soprano, called Junior, who helped to raise Tony while Johnny Boy was in prison.¹

Tony marries Carmela, and their children are Meadow and A.J.¹ Livia is the hardest relation on the Soprano crime family tree. The A.V. Club reads the panic attacks of the first episode as the work of Livia, and in Season 2 she still tells Tony that she never did anything to him.^3,4 Nancy Marchand, who played her, died in 2000, so Season 3 goes on without Livia.²

The chart draws the line from Junior to Johnny Boy as a dotted line between brothers, because the series never shows their parents. The same dotted style joins Tony to his cousin Tony Blundetto, who joins the story in Season 5 and goes into business for himself. Tony refuses to give him up to New York, and in the last episode of that season he kills his cousin with a shotgun rather than let Phil Leotardo reach him first.^6,3,2

Christopher Moltisanti is usually called the nephew of Tony, but the Soprano crime family tree shows that the name is a courtesy. He is the son of Dickie Moltisanti and a distant cousin of Carmela, and his grandfather is Hollywood Dick.¹ Dickie is not a blood relation of the Sopranos, but he was a leader in the Jersey mob and a father figure to the young Tony.¹

Christopher makes his first hit in the first episode and moves up a notch in the organisation at the end of Season 2.^3,5 His fiancée Adriana becomes an informant for the FBI in Season 4, and in Season 5 Silvio Dante drives her out into the woods, where she dies off camera.^2,3 In Season 6 Tony and Christopher crash on a dark road, and Tony kills the man who was like a son to him as he lies in the wreck.⁸

Janice has two partners on the Soprano crime family tree. In Season 2 Richie Aprile comes home from prison and takes up with her again, and the two of them look for a house to share.^2,4 Richie plots against Tony, and in the twelfth episode of the season he hits Janice at dinner and she shoots him dead.⁴

Her second husband is Bobby Baccalieri. At the start of Season 6 Janice is a mother, and Tony spends a birthday at the lake house of Bobby and Janice. Bobby is killed in the episode The Blue Comet, on the orders of Phil Leotardo.^3,2

The Aprile name comes in through Jackie Aprile, the acting boss of the DiMeo crime family, whose death in Season 1 opens the question of who leads.² His son Jackie Jr. dates Meadow, and in Season 3 Ralphie Cifaretto has him killed, which leaves Meadow heartbroken.²

A family tree cannot show who answers to whom, so the chart keeps the mob in a second layer. Every member of the DiMeo crime family carries the mark NJ at the corner of his symbol, and the two men of the New York family carry NY. No parent line and no marriage line stands for a mob relation, so a reader can tell blood from rank on the Soprano crime family tree.

In Season 1 Tony yields the title of boss to Junior in the episode Pax Soprana, which starts the rivalry between uncle and nephew that runs to the end of the series. Junior is arrested in the Season 1 finale and spends Season 2 under house arrest, a deposed king, while Tony leads.^2,3,4 In Season 6 Junior shoots Tony, and Tony lies in a coma.²

The men around Tony are Silvio Dante, one of his top lieutenants and most trusted advisers, Paulie Gualtieri, a faithful lieutenant, and Big Pussy, who worked for Dickie.¹ In the Season 2 finale Tony learns that Big Pussy wears a wire for the FBI, and the crew kill him and leave his body on the ocean floor.^5,2

In New York, Johnny Sack is taken by federal agents at the end of Season 5, and Phil Leotardo is expected to take charge, more vengeful than before after the death of his brother.⁶ Johnny Sack never comes home. In Stage 5, in the second part of Season 6, he dies of lung cancer in a prison hospital with his wife and two daughters at his bedside.⁷ Phil fights Tony through the second part of Season 6 until he is shot dead by Walden Belfiore, one of Tony’s men.²

A square is a man and a circle is a woman. A line between a couple with a line down to the children is a marriage, and a cross marks a death. The red ring holds the Sopranos, the blue ring the Moltisantis and the brown ring the Apriles. The marks NJ and NY show the crime families, and a man can carry a ring for his blood family and a mark for his crime family at once.

The coloured lines between people are the relations that the story turns on. Dark red double lines with an arrow mark a killing, and the words at each end say what each side does to the other at the season you have chosen. The line from Tony to Christopher reads as a mentor in Season 1 and as a killing in the second part of Season 6.

To build a Soprano crime family tree of your own, open the chart in the editor from this page or start from the story charts. The symbols are set out in the genogram symbols.