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When Rupert Murdoch in 1998 announced his abrupt separation from Anna Murdoch, his wife of 31 years, almost nobody at the time, including Anna, had any idea, or could reasonably speculate, that Murdoch, then an old 67, might have a girlfriend.

But he did. And his divorce and remarriage, and the effect it had on his children, social life and executives, would shape the next generation of his company – a romance for our time, as it were.

With the curt, and blistering, announcement of his decision to file for divorce from Wendi Murdoch, the young woman he met when she was 28 and working for Star TV, his company in Hong Kong, another upheaval begins.

It was two summers ago that Wendi burst into the news and transformed her public self from harridan to heroine by, with lightening fast reflexes, blocking a pie attack on her frail-looking husband in the midst of a difficult testimony in Britain before a committee of parliament investigating the hacking scandal.

This was to many people in the wider Rupert-Wendi orbit an unexpected turnaround. The informed gossip, always pretty granular in detail, had put them on the outs for sometime. She hadn't even diverted from a promotional tour for a movie she'd produced – until the last minute – to be in London with her up-against-it husband.

Murdoch had told his oldest son, Lachlan, that he'd concluded that marrying Wendi was a "mistake" – or so Lachlan, along with his siblings never a fan of his father's remarriage, was telling people. And during the many months that I was interviewing Murdoch in 2008 for my book about him, we would sometimes meet on weekend mornings at his apartment where it quite appeared he had not slept the night – but, rather, had arrived minutes before me with clothes bundled in his briefcase.

Indeed, if you imagined two opposite people, save only for their evident mutual ambition, it might be Rupert and Wendi.

Rupert, the cold, cryptic, scowling, impersonal, rock-hard conservative Australian aristocrat, with his four adult children unable to get over his marriage to the woman 39 years his junior. And Wendi, the energetic, ebullient, social creature, with natural liberal tendencies, whose first job in the US was at a Chinese restaurant and who had given him – "from the fridge", after his prostate cancer – two young Chinese children (and moved her parents to New York).

And yet, something seemed to work, too.

There was the orange hair die; the workout regimes; his protestations that he had finally learned how to be a good father; and his new friendship with, gasp, liberals. David Geffen, via Wendi, became one of Rupert's closest confidants.

Certainly, business seemed to energize them. I often heard them, like teenagers in love, talking on the phone – albeit about business deals and, more than not, from different cities. I even saw them holding hands.

But his children continued to dislike her. Even when they made every effort to tolerate her, it was with clenched teeth. And his mother, who died this past year, always refused to meet Wendi.

For her part, Wendi remained ever-furious with him for not standing up to his children – which included locking their children out of full participation in the trust that controls all the Murdoch assets.

She led a glamorous social life. In effect, she was the center of the jet set. It followed her: Hollywood, the art world, international super stars. She rejuvenated the jet set.

Rumors about their relationship dogged them. When the LA Times threatened to go public with a supposed story of infidelity, News Corp had lawyers debrief both husband and wife and convinced the paper to kill its story.

Robert Peston, the BBC's financial correspondent, who is said to be a close friend of Will Lewis, a key Murdoch lieutenant, tweeted that the real facts of the break-up are "jaw-dropping":

Am also told that undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping - & hate myself for wanting to know what they are

— Robert Peston (@Peston) June 13, 2013

We can only speculate about what he might mean. However, a year ago, she gave an interview to the New York Times suggesting that they were living independent lives. And Wendi's emails go through News Corp, so the company surely knows who she is talking to and what she is up to.

And yet, during the past year, what people have most noticed is their closeness. She had seemed to become his key adviser, close enough that there has been speculation she would go on the board of the newspaper company being split from the larger entertainment company.

She had also become, to his children's ever-greater consternation, his gatekeeper. Outsiders did not get to Rupert without going through Wendi.

But now the split is dramatic. As harsh as the split from Anna.

And in the fashion that Rupert does things – peremptorily, wrathfully, implacably – it would seem to leave Wendi far out in the cold. There is her 1999 pre-nup, and, to boot, two post-nups. What's more, it is a fearsome thing when News Corp and the Murdoch family close their ranks against you. Indeed, it is not that easy to hire a law firm not conflicted out by its work for News Corp, or the promise of work. Her PR aide, Steven Rubenstein, is on Rupert's payroll – so his help disappears.

Except, of course, that Wendi knows all Murdoch's secrets. All of them.