For 70 years, Rupert Murdoch hid from confrontation. He fired his mentor by letter, divorced a wife by email, and used one child to fire another. But in a sterile Nevada courtroom in September 2024, the 93-year-old mogul’s money and power couldn’t protect him any longer. He would finally face his estranged children under oath.

In early December 2023, Rupert unilaterally altered the irrevocable family trust to install his son Lachlan as his successor. Murdoch’s other adult children from his first two marriages—Prudence, Elisabeth, and James—sued to block the change. The lawsuit set up the final courtroom battle in a long-waged war to decide, once and for all, who would control his empire following his death.

Discovery had been like an autopsy of a family’s slow death. Depositions became an arena of psychological abuse. In one, Rupert’s lawyer fired humiliating questions at James as Rupert looked on: Have you ever done anything successful on your own? Why were you too busy to say “Happy birthday” to your father when he turned 90? Does it strike you that, in your account, everything that goes wrong is always somebody else’s fault? At one point, James noticed Rupert tapping on his phone and realized he was scripting the questions for the lawyer to ask. “How fucking twisted is that?” James later recalled.

For years, James had defended his father in public. At the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in 2018, he confronted a journalist who had written critically about the company. “You’re just trying to make a buck off my old man!” he said as his wife, Kathryn, gently tapped his arm to calm him down. James could defend Rupert no longer.

Rupert crafted narratives in the shadows, but the courtroom would require him to do it in the open. He needed to prove that his decision to give his empire to Lachlan wasn’t about politics, misogyny, or primogeniture. It was about money. Preserving Fox News’s conservative voice was best for the business. The Nevada probate commissioner would allow Rupert to amend the trust if he acted in good faith to protect his children’s financial interests. But James, Liz, and Prue—referred to in Rupert’s court filings as the “Objecting Children”—had a crucial advantage: They simply needed to keep the status quo. Their lawyers prepared to argue that Rupert and Lachlan were disenfranchising them to further Rupert’s dynastic and political project. If Rupert and Lachlan wanted them out of the trust, then they should pay a fair price for their shares. Anything else was stealing.

Facing the fight of his life, Rupert reached for his most reliable weapon: emotional manipulation. When Prue’s birthday arrived weeks before the trial, flowers appeared at her door. More brazenly, Rupert sent documents to James’s lawyer with a handwritten note: “Dear James, Still time to talk? Love, Dad. P.S.: Love to see my grandchildren one day.” The message was vintage Rupert: personal appeal wrapped around a business proposition with a dash of guilt. None of the siblings took the bait. They had learned too much about their dad’s methods to fall for his final charm offensive.

On the cold and gusty morning of September 17, Rupert arrived at the courthouse in a navy sweater under his dark suit, which he punctuated with a bright yellow tie. Photographs captured his wrinkled face, etched by deep grooves like a complex irrigation system. He climbed the courthouse steps with a pronounced stoop. It was the image of a man under siege.

Rupert’s lawyer Adam Streisand had a difficult task ahead. The trial’s opening day had not gone well for Rupert and Lachlan. Putting Rupert on the stand was a risk; he had a habit of stepping in it, especially when questioned. Years ago, Rupert’s PR adviser blanched when Rupert blurted out during an interview that Muslims have an inbreeding problem because they marry their cousins. Streisand was one of the country’s preeminent trust lawyers and well-positioned to shepherd Rupert through the most important testimony of his life. He previously litigated a lawsuit over the estate of William Randolph Hearst.

At first, Rupert stuck to the script. “I just felt sure, very certain that if these things weren’t settled, there would be trouble,” Rupert said, his voice faint but lucid. “If there’s uncertainty about the management, the public will feel it, inside the company would feel it.”