If the Succession writers pitched it as the season finale, you’d think they’d jumped the shark. A moneyed baroness, beloved by her ailing (second) husband and adored worldwide thanks to her philanthropic ventures, is murdered in cold blood by the jealous stepson who learned to shoot as a secret-service operative. There’s a palatial European property; a gilded international art collection; links to the British royals—and, at the end, a broad-daylight execution by a disgraced former spy that calls to mind the grisly shootings of Gianni Versace and Maurizio Gucci. Often life imitates art—but sometimes it doesn’t need to.
This can be said of 70 year-old Myriam Ullens de Schooten, better known in society circles as “Mimi,” who was murdered last Wednesday in the wealthy Belgian municipality of Lasne as she attempted to flee her home. The ambush, orchestrated by her stepson, was the bloody dénouement of a decades-long dispute over (what else) inheritance: who was getting it, and who was squandering it.
