The King's Dominion

His sons are at war. He's divorced his fourth wife and broken an engagement to a would-be fifth. The jewel in what's left of his crown faces a billion-dollar lawsuit. Will the division Rupert Murdoch spent his life fostering undo his empire?

- By Gabriel Sherman. Photograph by Marco Grob

On the afternoon of July 2, 2022, Rupert Murdoch’s black Range Rover pulled up to a 12th-century stone church in Westwell, a storybook Cotswolds village 75 miles west of London. The then 91-year-old Fox Corporation chairman traveled to the Oxfordshire countryside to attend his 21-year-old granddaughter Charlotte Freud’s wedding. Invitations instructed the 70 guests to wear “formal theatrical” attire. Murdoch emerged from his SUV looking like Tom Wolfe in a white suit, red suede shoes, and red tie. Then he nearly collapsed.

A day earlier, Murdoch was in a bed at Cromwell Hospital in London battling a serious case of COVID-19, two sources close to him said. Over the course of a week, doctors treated Murdoch’s symptoms—labored breathing and fatigue—with supplemental oxygen and antibodies, one of the sources said. His recovery was frustratingly slow. At the wedding, Murdoch needed the help of his oldest son, Lachlan, to keep him on his feet. “Rupert was very weak. Lachlan was holding him up to get from place to place,” a guest recalled.