“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” begins Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. This is an appropriate lens to view Rupert Murdoch’s semi-public family feud. This week, it emerged that the media mogul had lost the first round in his legal bid to secure his empire for Lachlan, his eldest son and anointed heir, over his other children – James, Elisabeth and Prudence. More than a power play, it was Murdoch’s final push to secure his rightwing media vision, even at the expense of family unity.

The familial strife – driven by blurred lines between business and family, ideological clashes and a patriarch’s weakening grip – exemplifies Tolstoy’s “unique unhappiness”. The Murdochs’ conflicts are shaped by their extraordinary wealth, influence and public scrutiny. The divisions could paralyse corporate decision making, destabilising a media empire with significant repercussions for the culture and politics of the Anglosphere.

The battle to change the terms of the Murdochs’ irrevocable family trust is very much an internal family affair. Rupert Murdoch’s six children share equal stakes in the family trust, but his youngest daughters, Chloe and Grace, lack voting rights. For now, Mr Murdoch holds ultimate control, with voting power split between him and his four eldest children. After his death, it had been assumed that they would each get one vote and would have to work out the division of labour between themselves.

The trust controls the Murdoch empire, split between Fox – home to the TV news network accused of rightwing bias and false reporting as well as its broadcast and cable business – and News Corp, which owns US titles such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post; the Times and the Sun in the UK; and more than half of Australia’s biggest dailies.

At the centre of the struggle is Fox News, a $20bn media behemoth central to US conservative politics and Donald Trump’s rise. Mr Murdoch, and Lachlan, pushed Fox sharply rightward, alienating Lachlan’s siblings and leading to a $790m defamation settlement over election falsehoods. Mr Murdoch’s younger son, James, who had been passed over in favour of Lachlan, takes the hardest line against Fox.

In April 2023, Mr Murdoch’s children began planning for his death, spurred by an episode of HBO’s Succession – a thinly veiled take on their own family – where a patriarch’s death sparks chaos. Alarmed by the parallels, Elisabeth’s team drafted a “Succession memo” to avoid art becoming reality. But Lachlan, and his father, moved to head off the proposals by seeking to amend the trust to cement his primacy. Dubbed, ironically, “Project Family Harmony”, it labelled James as the “troublesome beneficiary”. In a Reno courtroom, a probate commissioner found Mr Murdoch had acted in “bad faith”.

Mr Murdoch will appeal, but the cost is clear: further estrangement from three of his children. Only Lachlan attended his summer wedding to his fifth wife. Mr Murdoch may fail to amend the trust. That would raise the stakes, posthumously. Lachlan might try to buy out his siblings; James and Elisabeth could push to reshape or dismantle Fox News. Selling assets could end tensions but dismantle the legacy Mr Murdoch built – one in which personal ambition and corporate control are entwined.