Lachlan Murdoch turned 53 on Sunday, his first birthday since taking over the family's media empire from his father Rupert in November. And if he finds himself in a contemplative state of mind, how might he reflect upon the great balance sheet of life?

Despite running one of the most powerful media companies in the world, Lachlan Murdoch remains something of an enigma and seems to like it that way. He rarely gives interviews or makes significant public pronouncements and he guards his privacy fiercely.

So it must have been excruciating when deep divisions within the Murdoch family were laid bare six weeks ago in a New York Times story that made headlines around the world. The fact the news broke on the day Lachlan was to host a dinner celebrating 60 years since the launch of The Australian newspaper could only have added to his discomfort.

Under the terms of the family trust set up following Rupert and Anna Murdoch's 1999 divorce, their three children — Lachlan, older sister Elisabeth and younger brother James — as well as Rupert's daughter from his first marriage, Prudence, will have equal say in the fate of the business when Rupert dies. Murdoch watchers had speculated that Lachlan's siblings could unite to overthrow Lachlan and moderate the editorial line of the media assets, which many believe fuel division, particularly in the US.

We now know the possibility of this happening prompted Lachlan and Rupert to make an extraordinary intervention. This month, in a closed court in Nevada, USA, Rupert Murdoch will argue that the terms of the family trust be altered to guarantee Lachlan's control of the empire, uniting Prudence, Elisabeth and James in fierce opposition. The family has been torn asunder.

Families are complex. Children can disappoint parents, and vice versa. Siblings compete, antagonise one another and fall out. It's just that when it comes to the Murdochs the stakes are extraordinarily high and the whole world is watching.

'They've got to prove themselves'

Since Lachlan was a child, there's been an expectation that one of Rupert and Anna's children would take over the family business, just as Rupert had done following the death of his father Keith in 1952. But the question of which one has been a source of fascination, speculation and rumour for decades.

Rupert's succession was spelled out in his father's will and he faced no opposition from his three sisters, whom he eventually bought out in the 1990s. In Lachlan's case, the road to succession has been far rockier and he's had to play a much longer game.

Over the past 30 years, Lachlan, Elisabeth and James have all jockeyed for the top job. Even though Lachlan is most closely aligned politically with his father, and was once described by Rupert as "first among equals", at various times each one of them has seemed the likely successor.

"It's every father's natural desire to see his children follow him," Rupert told an interviewer in 1995. "But they've got to prove themselves first. We'll have to see how they work it out — I hope not fight it out."

That unhappy possibility was certainly a concern of Anna's. In 1987, when the children were still in their teens, she wrote her second novel, Family Business, which touched on the thorny issue of succession within a family media company.

In the book, the character Yarrow McLean owns a newspaper and her three children — two boys and a girl — are on the board. But when tensions between the siblings reach a head, Yarrow confronts them.

"I address my remarks to my own three children," Yarrow McLean says. "I thought you would come to trust and respect each other. I thought that responsibility would teach each of you humility. I was wrong. It taught you greed and disloyalty and hatred." Yarrow then announces she is going to sell the paper.

In an interview from around the time of the book's release, Anna Murdoch explained: "I wanted to show the break-up within the family, that I think power and money can actually affect sibling relationships."

A little over a decade later, when she and Rupert divorced, that concern remained front of mind. According to journalist David Leser, who landed an exclusive interview with Anna two years after the divorce, she had two main concerns for her children.

First, she wanted to make sure that no future offspring of Rupert's would have a say in the business. She could have walked away with half the empire but instead sought assurances that only Rupert's four existing children could determine the fate of the company following Rupert's death and that they share the responsibility equally. This led to the formation of the family trust that, 25 years later, is making headlines around the world.

Poignantly, her other major concern was that her three children would ultimately be pitted against one another, much as she had imagined in her novel more than a decade earlier. As Leser told Australian Story: "She worried about that because how do you follow Rupert's act? And who's going to be first among equals? And what's that going to do to the relationship between those three?"

One can only imagine how she feels now watching the current drama unfold.

The phrase "real-life Succession" is overused when talking about the Murdoch family but it remains tantalisingly apt.

Jesse Armstrong created his critically acclaimed television drama after abandoning a movie-length dramatisation of the Murdoch family story. And the overarching storyline of Succession — two sons and a daughter trying to prove to their father they are worthy of taking over the family's legacy media empire — mirrors the reality of being a child of Rupert Murdoch.

It's a work of fiction, obviously, and those who know the Murdochs are quick to point out that they carry themselves with far more decorum than the members of Succession's Roy family, whose frailties and predilections are drawn in lurid detail.

"If you look at the Murdoch family, to me, it's the very antithesis of that rather salacious television program," family friend and former investment banker Mark Burrows told Australian Story. "The Murdochs are innately polite, respectful and, certainly when it comes to Lachlan, very family oriented."

Others, however, find the parallels irresistible. Media proprietor and former Murdoch editor Eric Beecher jokes that, "for me, it was a documentary", while New York Times journalist Jim Rutenberg, who co-wrote the story of the family trust, says that after the story broke, "We got so many notes from readers asking if this really was written by the scriptwriters for Succession. It's hard to believe that this actually is happening."

'Everyone likes a soap opera'

The media's fascination over the years with the succession battle within the family — fuelled in part by Rupert Murdoch's frequent references to the children needing to prove themselves — has clearly been a source of irritation for the Murdoch siblings.

"Speculation that we must all be thinking about what may or may not happen in 20 or 30 years' time, it's gotten to a point where it's boring," Lachlan Murdoch said in a rare interview for the ABC's Dynasties program in 2001.

In 2012, Elisabeth Murdoch was asked directly whether succession was an issue in the family. She denied that she and her brothers ever talked about it, adding: "It's more speculated upon than I think it merits. Everyone sort of likes the idea of a soap opera. And the reality is really not that. We're a normal family. We just have a bit of a spotlight on us."

It's widely believed that for a long time, the Murdoch siblings were close.

Eric Beecher recalls visiting the Murdoch household when they were in their teens. "It just struck me that a family that was so abnormal in so many ways in terms of its power and its wealth could be such a normal family behind closed doors."

They were frequently pictured together at business meetings and family gatherings, including Rupert's wedding to Jerry Hall in London in 2016.

Before news of the courtroom challenge to the family trust broke, speculation about James, Elisabeth and Prudence leading a palace coup after Rupert's death seemed far-fetched.

Elisabeth, who appears happy working for Sister, the production company she co-founded in 2019, was considered a peacemaker within the family. Close to her father and with no dog in the fight, she tended to keep her thoughts on the family's media assets to herself, although she did publicly distance herself from James and her father following the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed the Murdochs' UK operation in 2011.

Prudence has never shown much interest in the family business, although she is capable of making her presence felt. In 1999 she threw a very public tantrum after reading a story in which Rupert referred to his "three children". She contacted a journalist from rival media company Fairfax to say how hurt she was, with the resulting story appearing on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald on the morning of Lachlan's wedding to Sarah O'Hare.

It's Lachlan and James who seemed to have the trickiest relationship, perhaps not surprising given their closeness in age and seemingly disparate temperaments. When Lachlan returned to the family fold in 2014 after nine years of self-imposed exile, he and James worked alongside each other in an uneasy alliance.

While Lachlan is frequently described as more conservative than his father, James is more liberal and growing tension between the two became public following the sale of a big chunk of the family business to Disney in 2018. James left it to Rupert and Lachlan to run the remaining media assets and felt increasingly free to voice his disapproval of the editorial lines being run on Fox News and in the News Corp papers. Many believe the relationship between Lachlan and James broke down irrevocably from this point.

The real clue that relationships within the family had soured more broadly was the absence of Elisabeth, James and Prudence from their father's wedding to Elena Zhukova in June this year. It raised suspicions, now confirmed, that something was seriously amiss.

The fact Rupert Murdoch is said to have dubbed his efforts to lock in Lachlan's supremacy "Project Harmony" suggests he seriously misread the situation, underestimating the depth and unanimity of feeling among the siblings. Now Lachlan finds himself isolated while his three siblings are united as never before.

Rupert's long shadow

Perhaps the cruellest irony in all of this is that the act of succeeding Rupert Murdoch is impossible. He is one of the towering figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. Even those who deplore his influence have a grudging respect for the sheer scale of his achievements.

Lachlan Murdoch has spent his entire life in his father's shadow. Even now, despite having been anointed as the chosen one almost a year ago, it is rarely his name that is invoked when discussing the fortunes of the company.

The saga currently playing out in a Nevada courtroom suggests Rupert, at 93, is still fighting Lachlan's battles for him. And in doing so, is seeking to maintain his influence on the family empire from the grave. That's a very long shadow indeed.

As Lachlan Murdoch celebrates his birthday today, what will he make of it all? He has the job he was groomed for all his life, a successful 25-year marriage, three children, friends who attest to his integrity and loyalty, sprawling mansions in Sydney and Los Angeles and a $150 million superyacht.

But the businesses he runs face unprecedented structural challenges, his most profitable media asset has inflamed division at one of the most consequential moments in American history and his three siblings are publicly united against him.

Has it all been worth it?

Lachlan Murdoch and members of the Murdoch family did not accept our requests for an interview.

Australian Story's three-part series Making Lachlan Murdoch starts Monday at 8 on ABC TV and ABC iview.