Handmaiden or peacemaker but never No.1: The Murdoch daughters ‘forsaken’ by their father

It can’t have been easy for Prudence Murdoch to speak plainly to her father. Most of us grow up to realise our parents are not the all-powerful colossus we once thought they were; she grew up to learn her father, Rupert, was exactly that, and more.

He wasn’t just a loud voice at the Christmas table. His opinions reverberated throughout the world; his newspapers and television networks echoed them, politicians second-guessed them, not even prime ministers were game to contradict them.

Prudence (left), Elisabeth and James Murdoch outside a Nevada court in September.Credit: NYT

Prue, his 60-something eldest daughter, might have thought that the one thing Rupert Murdoch could not assume to know better than her were the thoughts and feelings inside her own head. But apparently, she was wrong there, too.

A few weeks before three of the Murdoch children took their father and eldest brother, Lachlan, to court over their attempt to take control of the family business empire from Prue and two of her siblings, she sent him a text thanking him for sending her birthday flowers but adding that she felt he didn’t realise how much he had hurt her and her sister, Elisabeth.

“Nonsense,” her father wrote back.

The fallout between Rupert and Lachlan, and the three other eldest children – Prudence, Elisabeth and James – has gripped the world. After years of watching their poker faces in public and wondering what was going on beneath, two lengthy articles about the fight for control of the Murdoch family empire in The New York Times and The Atlantic have confirmed long-held suspicions that the real-life succession drama is just as brutal as any television show and far more miserable for the characters.

Gretel Packer was never considered a contender to take over from her father.Credit: AFR

Much of the public story has revolved around James, the so-called Troublesome Beneficiary who shared his story with The Atlantic. But his tale is haunted by the experience of his two sisters, Prue and Liz, and the way that, though they are Rupert’s eldest children, their gender gave them bit-part roles in a dynasty that would only ever consider their brothers as genuine heirs.

In that, Prue and Liz would feel an affinity with Gretel Packer, who, at a celebration of the family’s philanthropy last week, thanked her brother, James, for asking her to chair the foundation. He knew, she said, that she would relish being given the “opportunity”.

Gretel is 59. James is 57. There was never any suggestion that Gretel had a shot at running the Packer family business. While the royal houses of Europe have changed their succession rules to allow women to inherit the throne ahead of their brothers, Australia’s media dynasties remain patriarchal to the core.

Prudence, Rupert’s eldest daughter and the child of his first marriage, never appears to have wanted a career in the business. She’s said to be the family peacemaker, although that role does not come with much thanks.

Prudence, who first married in the 1980s, chose not to closely involve herself in the family business.Credit: AP

At one point, her father enlisted her help to convince “troublesome” James to sell his stake. “Why don’t you suggest that he calls me on my birthday and then I can widen the conversation?” Rupert asked in an email that was read at a legal hearing over the dispute.

She gave him “unsolicited advice on how to treat her brother”, The New York Times wrote, and suggested that if James called, Rupert should initiate a more fatherly conversation. “Tell him you miss seeing the kids, ask how they are, etc., ask him about all the things he’s been doing,” she suggested.

“I know,” her father responded. “Not totally stupid.”

Prudence’s reaction when she heard her father wanted to meet her in London was telling, too. She, Liz and James had been discussing potential funeral plans for their father, based on the plans modelled for the Queen, and she “panicked” that he’d found out.

Liz Murdoch, shown here at 14 months old, came closest of Rupert’s daughters to being a contender for his crown.Credit: Getty Images

“She sent Liz a series of anxious, exclamation-point-laden texts, asking her to call.” Her father admitted at the trial that his children’s decision to discuss the prospect of his funerary arrangements – something many would consider a sensible move for adults whose parents are in their 90s – had “irritated” him.

Liz could have been in contention as a successor. She proved her capacity when she left the family business and started Shine, a production company responsible for shows such as MasterChef. Her father ended up buying it, and she became subordinate to him again.

“My father was always trying to pull everyone into the company so that he could manipulate them against each other,” James told The Atlantic.

She was a dutiful handmaiden and was the one who suggested to her father that a way to protect the family from the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed the family’s British newspaper business would be sacrificing her brother, James, on the company pyre. He liked the idea; “Go tell him,” Rupert said, and she obeyed.

The episode deeply damaged Liz’s relationship with James. More than a decade later, she told The Atlantic she couldn’t believe she’d betrayed James in her quest for her father’s approval. “It’s one of the greatest regrets of my life,” she said.

When Rupert decided the only way to ensure Lachlan, who shared his views on the conservative direction of the company, would remain boss when he died, he encouraged Lachlan to buy out his other eldest children from a trust set up specifically to share control between them, and then, when that didn’t work, Murdoch tried to buy James out himself. Finally, he decided to restructure the trust.

Liz was shocked that her father thought she’d hand over her rights without a fight. “I felt so violated and forsaken,” she reportedly said.

When she lobbied him, he implied that she was acting as a handmaiden to her brother. “You’re being lobbied by James,” her father said. “And you’re going to bend to his will.” Perhaps he thought she’d obey James because she’d been so compliant with him.

Elisabeth Murdoch told the court she and her father were “incredibly close” before he unveiled the scheme to cut her and her sister out of a controling stake in the family trust.Credit: WireImage

“Do you think I’m a f---ing moron?” she shot back.

The implication that Rupert felt others easily influenced his two oldest daughters was directly put to him at the trial.

“And the solution to that problem of having two grown women having to make a decision [about the head of the company after their father’s death] was for you to make the decision for them, correct?” he was asked. “Yes,” Rupert answered.

James was brutal in his assessment of his father’s attitude to women. “He is a misogynist,” he told The Atlantic.

In the end, though, Prudence Murdoch and Gretel Packer may be the true victors in these dynastic dramas. They might still yearn for their father’s approval, but they bought themselves a modicum of peace when they stopped chasing it.

That was never an option for their brothers.

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