"James also seemed compelled, in part, by a desire to add his chapter to the literature of family dysfunction, in hopes that some future family might take the lessons more seriously than his own had. During our first meeting, he told me about a document that one of his father’s lawyers had written, which included a quote from King Lear: 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.'
"James and Kathryn found it darkly amusing. Did Rupert and his lawyers not realize that the famous line uttered by the mad king is aimed at Cordelia, who turns out to be Lear’s only honest daughter?
" 'The whole point is that the crazy old man doesn't know that Cordelia is telling him the truth,' Kathryn told me. Her husband studied a spot on the table in front of him [while Kathryn talked about this].
(2) Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg, The Murdoch Family Plot. Rupert always wanted his children to inherit his empire. But years of backstabbing and drama cultivated in a brazen scheme to upend his own succession plan. New York Times Magazine, Feb 23, 2025, at page 26 (online publishing Feb 13, 2025). https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/ ... ly-trust-fight.html
Excerpts in the windows of print:
'You are completely disenfranchising me and my siblings,' Elizabeth told her father. 'You've blown a hole in the family.'
'You are the kingpin,' Rupert's second wife wrote to him. 'You still hold the power.'
'You already lost one son,' Prudence wrote to her father. 'And you could well lose two daughters over this.'
Quote:
The contours of the Murdoch family trust date to 1999, when, at age 68, Rupert divorced his second wife, Anna, a former reporter at one of his papers, after meeting Wendi Deng, an executive in his Asia division * * * Anna filed for divorce in California, where she was entitled to half of everything Rupert had built since their marriage 31 years earlier. She sacrificed that right during the divorce negotiations to ensure that Rupert’s four existing children — and not any future heirs — would inherit his fortune after his death. Their eventual divorce agreement divided the controlling interest in the empire equally among the four: Prue, Liz, Lachlan and James. Rupert would have no say over who would run things after he was gone.
