BATTLE FOR THE THRONE

As word of a judgement leaks from the courtroom where the Murdochs have been tussling for power, those close to the throne suggest that the battle for the world’s most powerful media empire has only just begun.

- WILLIAM LANGLEY

In a small, slab-fronted courthouse in a town built on gambling, Rupert Murdoch laid the biggest bet of his extraordinary career, and lost.

The empire he had built in a bruising, buccaneering lifetime shuddered, and no one knows where the pieces might fall. A secret hearing, convened to decide who would inherit the 93-year-old tycoon's global media business, ended with a crushing rebuttal of Rupert's plan to give everything to his eldest son, Lachlan.

The court in Reno, Nevada, accused Murdoch Sr of "acting in bad faith" and struck down his attempt to revise a long-established family trust.

Rupert Murdoch once suggested that he could live forever. "In the unlikely event that I prove to be mortal..." he began, and the executives around him laughed obligingly. They didn't know that Rupert planned on running his empire from beyond the grave.

After five marriages, six children and a lifetime spent building a vast global media business, the mogul was finally and reluctantly forced to confront the question of who fills his shoes. The result has been a dynasty at war, with billions of dollars at stake and the spoils of power being fought for across three continents.

The Murdoch clan that once orbited reverentially around the patriarch is now spinning off in fiery trails of rancour and division. More accustomed to fighting politicians and business rivals, the boss has found himself in a bitter courtroom battle with his own children.

No one seriously expected Rupert to quietly slip away. But neither did they foresee him finding a means to keep a posthumous grip on his business.

The plan to give exclusive control of the empire to 53-year-old Lachlan outraged three of his other children, James, Elisabeth and Prudence, who joined forces to oppose it, and for two weeks in September the Murdochs and their lawyers sat eyeballing each other across the benches.