Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969), a self-made man who had accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the United States from Wall Street and Hollywood movies, became the American Ambassador to Britain in 1938. Descended from Irish Catholic immigrants, Kennedy’s success embodied the ragsto-riches myth of American immigration and assimilation. His appointment to the Court of St. James, which owed much to his friendship with President Roosevelt, was only a step in the Kennedy’s dramatic rise to the status of American royalty and tragic mythology.

Nonetheless, Kennedy’s isolationism and anti-Semitism during the Second World War meant the architect of Camelot was unable to gain the presidency and instead turned to his nine children by Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy The eldest, Joe Jr., the father’s first choice for president, died on a flying mission during the War. After the second son, John Fitzgerald (1917–63), survived his ordeal as commander of a torpedo boat PT 109 in the Pacific, his father orchestrated his attempt to run for the House of Representatives for Boston, MA, using his wartime heroism and the family’s Boston connections to sell him in an unfamiliar constituency In 1946 Kennedy entered Congress as one of the few successful Democrats in a year of Republican dominance and the head of a new generation of Democrats. In 1952 when Republican Eisenhower trounced Adlai Stevenson in the presidential race, Kennedy defeated Henry Cabot Lodge in Massachusetts’ Senate race, and soon thereafter married Jacqueline Bouvier, an elegant young journalist with intellectual and social credentials as well as her own features of the Kennedy legend.

Meanwhile, John’s younger brother, Robert (1925–68), made a name for himself as an assistant to Joseph McCarthy in the attempt to purge communists from all branches of the government. Robert’s connection with McCarthy would later seem anomalous in light of his much-touted radical credentials. Yet his father had tended to see Roosevelt’s internationalism though the prism of communist or Jewish conspiracy.

After a less than distinguished period in the Senate, John Kennedy ran for the presidency in 1960, where the Kennedy machine defeated consummate parliamentarian and Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson for the nomination and barely defeated Richard Nixon in the general elections. With help from friends, John Kennedy also had become the celebrated author of Profiles in Courage (1954), for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize. At the same time, Robert matched Nixon in campaign strategy including helping to get Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. released from jail in the week before the election, swinging many African American votes to Kennedy (with a poor civil-rights record) and providing the slim margin of victory.

JFK created a special moment for the Kennedy myth, epitomized in the epithet “Camelot,” linking his regime to the mythical age of King Arthur. The president’s reliance on his family, especially his father’s advice, and his younger brother continued with Robert as an activist Attorney-General in civil rights and a key role in Cuban interventions. Following JFK’s assassination—again a defining moment for the nation— Robert continued serving Lyndon Johnson, although his contempt for the Texan made this short-lived, and he seized the opportunity of a vacant New York Senate seat.

In 1968, following Eugene McCarthy’s strong showing against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary “Bobby” Kennedy joined the race for the presidency After winning the California primary in June, however, he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

This left Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy as the remaining son (the daughters had public but less political and sometimes tragic lives). “Inheriting” the Massachusetts Senate seat, he had developed a strong reputation as a good legislator without the charisma of John or the political savvy of Robert. Nevertheless, the Kennedy mystique might have gained him the White House but for a July 1969 incident at Chappaquiddick, in which Edward drove off a bridge, drowning Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy’s failure to report the accident immediately to police led to the widespread suspicion that he had been drunk. When he later tried to wrest the Democratic Party nomination from Jimmy Carter in 1980, the incident and other rumors haunted him. As the third most senior senator, Edward has remained a powerful liberal voice in the Democratic Party.

In the next generation, while Kennedy “cousins”—including member of Congress Joseph P. Kennedy II (Massachusetts), Patrick Kennedy (Rhode Island) and Maryland Lieutenant-Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—have been visible in politics and media, John F. Kennedy Jr., became the focus of the family mystique. Since his birth to the charismatic first family and the photograph of him saluting his father’s cortege in 1963, he has been treated by media and the public as a prince whose time on the throne would come. His legal career and political magazine George were followed in detail, as were his dating with and marriage to Carolyn Bessette. When, in July 1999, he crashed his single-engine plane at Martha’s Vineyard en route to a Kennedy clan wedding in Hyannisport (although he was not qualified for the flight), the incident was treated as a national tragedy by media and government—and a tragic myth of the rise and fall of royalty brought full circle.