When Rupert Murdoch surveyed the Republican National Convention from his box in the Milwaukee arena, he was, as usual, hard to read. At 93, his face has settled into a mask of vulpine repose, akin to that of an emperor in the gathering shadows of his time.

Few people knew then that, in fact, the Murdoch family dynasty was riven by a feud over the succession. At that moment, it seemed simply that Murdoch had turned up to witness the apotheosis of his yearslong collusion with Donald Trump. Together, through Fox News, they had hijacked the Republican Party and transformed it into a vitriolic personality cult.

And, as it happened, it was that alliance that had played a decisive part in blowing up any chance that Murdoch could die with the satisfaction of knowing that his global media empire would pass seamlessly to his heirs.

And there is a good deal more to the family rupture than the desperate legal steps, first revealed by The New York Times, that Murdoch is taking to change a so-called irrevocable family trust so that his son Lachlan takes over the empire, in defiance of his three other eldest children, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence.

It was evident long ago that James, in particular, felt that Fox News had poisoned the reputation of the whole business and that he wanted rid of it, a move that animated Rupert’s attempted coup on behalf of the loyal Lachlan. Rupert’s legal action cites “a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content” as a reason to give Lachlan the voting rights to stave off such a change, according to the Times.

The problem was—and is—that Rupert has never had any problem with the cohabitation of journalistic extremes in either his brain or, for example, in his New York headquarters where Fox News operates out of the same tower on the Avenue of the Americas as his sober benchmark national newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.

This morally bifurcated business model (that also exists in London) is okay with Lachlan too. On the evidence of his stewardship of Fox News, a moral compass isn’t something he seems to be familiar with.

However, some analysts believe that James wants to go beyond offloading Fox News—although that in itself would be a lucrative move. As one analyst told me, “Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. There must be some nutter who would buy Fox News for $30 billion.” (Brian Stelter reported in his book Hoax that in 2019, a private equity firm sounded out Lachlan on a deal at that price but was rebuffed).

The larger plan, which James is said to have considered, is a reorganization of the empire’s assets based on a favorite euphemism of mogul maneuvering: “tax efficiency”—a strategy that often surfaces in succession dramas. (A rep for James declined to comment when reached by Vanity Fair.)

This would be strikingly counter to his father’s preferences. In 2022, Rupert and Lachlan proposed merging the two main corporations, Fox and News, which was widely interpreted as an indication that Rupert wanted control of them to pass to Lachlan on his father’s death.

Three months later, that idea was abandoned after strong opposition from major stockholders in News Corp. They had two concerns: The value of their investments would suffer—and the reputational harm of being in the same fold as Fox News. All of this highlights the basic tension in the family: Fox News is Rupert’s invention and agent of his political power, but to others it is the toxic contaminant in the underbelly of the empire.

I was cautioned not to assume that James, Elisabeth, and Prudence agree on all issues, particularly on the idea of a reorganization, just because they are united in opposing the change to the trust. Elisabeth has always been an independent careerist, not beholden to her father. Currently, she runs the film studio Sister Pictures. Prudence avoids any public life, reportedly calling herself a “housewife.”

In the immediate future, the family is alarmed about the reputational and financial damage facing the two principal Murdoch businesses—Fox Corporation, holding the core TV interests, and News Corp, home of the newspaper empire—as a result of two unresolved and costly legal cases, which would impact any valuation of assets.

The first results from Fox News’s slavish support of Trump’s claim that the 2020 election result was rigged with the help of rogue voting machines. It has already forced the company to make a settlement of $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems. Smartmatic is expected to go to court in New York in 2025 with a similar defamation case against Fox. The voting technology company’s ability to press home the case is now reinforced by a multimillion-dollar investment from Reid Hoffman, a cofounder of LinkedIn.

In London, it is the notorious hacking scandal at the Murdoch tabloids that still, after more than 15 years, drains the coffers. The final wave of claims made by 40 plaintiffs, led by Prince Harry, is due to reach court in January—unless the Murdochs settle in advance, as they have done with three previous waves, to the tune of an estimated 1.9 billion British pounds, including legal costs and the confidential settlements.

For the family, the greatest jeopardy of the two cases lies in the risk of Rupert Murdoch himself having to give evidence in court, an experience that, at his age, they feel, could be an intolerable ordeal. This was the main reason for the Dominion settlement. (Murdoch was deposed last November by Smartmatic lawyers.)

In London the same is true. The outcome there is as much in the hands of Prince Harry as it is Murdoch: Which one will blink first?

Concurrently in London, the landslide electoral victory of Keir Starmer’s remade Labour Party also marked the waning of Murdoch’s political influence. At one time his summer garden parties were a compulsory event for the leaders of both main parties who had to kiss the ring. (Tony Blair, both during and after his premiership, was a longtime supplicant).

“Murdoch is no longer the pope,” a seasoned political observer tells me. “The Murdochs can do us no more harm”—a reference to the influence of the Murdoch papers on the catastrophic Brexit movement. To be sure, Lachlan was received politely by Starmer’s team, and two of the Murdoch titles, The Sun and The Sunday Times, endorsed Labour. But that was gratuitous—the needle didn’t need them to swing left of center.

Meanwhile, the jubilant coronation of Trump that Murdoch witnessed in Milwaukee, seemingly a slam dunk for Fox News and confirming its dominance in the prime-time coverage of the 2024 presidential race, has been completely screwed by the switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris.

We’ll never really know if the Milwaukee carnival accurately described the world as Murdoch wanted it to be. It certainly described the world that Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Redux, had betted the business on.

Now it looks like Trump and Fox News are, in a way unthinkable only a week or so ago, stuck on the wrong side of history. Like the Trump base, the Fox News audience is predominantly white and aging. A generational tsunami has been unleashed by the Democrats, in which social media is a far more precise and responsive way of building, energizing, and funding a campaign than old media—cable TV and newsprint.

James Murdoch effectively quit the family business in 2020 citing “disagreements over certain editorial content” and “certain other strategic decisions.” He and his wife, Kathryn Hufschmid, donated to the 2020 Biden campaign. The new Democratic ticket is probably even more their thing.

However, James’s saintly status has been somewhat punctured by allegations in the tabloid hacking case that he directed the systematic destruction of any evidence that could have shown that his father had direct knowledge of the depravity of his newsrooms. James had his father’s back then, and at that time in 2011, he seemed well-placed to become the ultimate winner in the fight to succeed.

As things have now turned out, though, Lachlan could be inheriting a poisoned chalice. As dynastic dramas go, this one will run and run.