Lisa Marie Presley Was Rock ’n’ Roll Royalty. Graceland Was Her Castle. (Published 2023) (2024)

When Elvis Presley died in 1977, Lisa Marie Presley, his only child, inherited Graceland — an eight-bedroom, eight-bath Colonial revival house in Memphis that became one of the most iconic pieces of real estate in American music history.

Graceland was the personal home of the king of rock ’n’ roll from 1957 until his death at the age of 42. For Ms. Presley, rock ’n’ roll royalty who died on Thursday in Los Angeles, Graceland was the castle where she spent holidays with her father, and notoriously had full daytime reign of its grand, chandelier-lit rooms while her night owl father slept.

Ms. Presley was back at Graceland just four days before her death — she visited the estate on Sunday to celebrate what would have been her father’s 88th birthday. On Thursday, following what her family has described as a “medical emergency,” she was rushed from her home in Calabasas, Calif., to a Los Angeles hospital, and shortly after was pronounced dead. She was 54.

Only 9 years old when her father died, Ms. Presley, a singer-songwriter in her own right who never escaped her late father’s shadow, assumed full control of her trust in 1993, on her 25th birthday. This included Graceland, as well as its eponymous 13.8-acre estate.

It became her life’s work through tumult and loss. Even as she stared down financial ruin, she held onto the estate.

She tapped her business manager Barry Siegel to manage the trust’s assets — a move, she would say, that triggered an avalanche of debt and devastation. In 2005, Mr. Siegel sold an 85 percent stake in the Elvis Presley Estate. The stake included Elvis’s intellectual property, his image, likeness and the right to operate Graceland as a tourist attraction.