Jacqueline Bouvier was born on July 28, 1929, into upper-class America. Her sister Lee arrived four years later. The two grew up in a Park Avenue apartment built by their grandfather, a real-estate developer, and summered in the Hamptons.
Their upbringing was filled with horses, ballet and books, almost like an English, 18th-century kind of childhood. But their parents did not like each other very much, and that became a source of anxiety for both girls.
Competition between the sisters was fierce. Each judged herself against the other, and more often than not it was Lee who found herself overshadowed, whether in school grades, piano recitals, horse-riding or the affection of their father.
"Black Jack" Bouvier was a man about town, impeccably dressed and a member of many New York clubs. He spoiled his daughters and gave them their sense of style, telling them that clothes may make the man but they also make the woman.
Their parents' marriage was troubled. After years of arguments, their mother Janet sued for divorce in the summer of 1940 and later married Hugh Auchincloss, a wealthy stockbroker. The Bouvier sisters became members of one of America's richest families, but life at the Auchincloss estate in Virginia was far from straightforward.
Their mother's second husband already had three children from previous marriages, and the Bouvier sisters were newcomers and outsiders. Divorce was unacceptable in those days, and the girls were teased at school while accounts of it appeared in the newspapers.
As Jackie and Lee approached their 20s, marriage came to dominate their lives. In their milieu, education mattered, but the real goal was to marry a man of position and wealth. Janet had great social ambitions for her daughters and was determined to push them into the highest level of society.
First Jackie and then Lee made their debuts at society balls. At this time it was younger sister Lee who shone brightest. She matched Jackie's achievement in being crowned Queen Deb of the season, but she was widely thought the prettier, more stylish and more approachable of the sisters.
In April 1953, aged 20, Lee wed Michael Canfield, rumored to be the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kent. He was tall, handsome, privileged and popular, and seemed the ideal match. There was speculation, however, that Lee was taken less with her new husband than with the idea of beating her older sister to the altar.
Lee's wedding only heightened the family's concerns about Jackie, who was taking her time finding a husband. An engagement to a young stockbroker in 1952 had been broken off after just a few months, once Jackie realized she was in love neither with her fiancé nor the life he promised.
Jackie did not want to be another society matron in New York City. She went into a profession, working as a photojournalist in Washington, where she interviewed politicians, celebrities and people on the street. To her family, however, she was at a dangerous age as each new debutante season brought younger girls onto the marriage market.
Then along came John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was like the George Clooney of 1953. He had a magnetic way with women, and Jackie was interested in politics. She saw a man she would never be bored with, and he saw a woman of beauty and brains.
Kennedy had just announced his run for the Senate, but his reputation as a womanizing playboy was becoming problematic. Politics dictated that he have a wife. His father, Joe, a former ambassador to Britain and the director of his son's career, saw Jackie as the perfect society wife.
Kennedy proposed in June 1953, just two months after Lee's marriage to Michael Canfield. Once again, Jackie had left her younger sister in the shade.
On September 12, 1953, Jackie Bouvier married John F. Kennedy at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island. Among the hundreds of revelers was Lee, just five months married herself.
Lee and her husband moved to London, where they enjoyed a packed social calendar, but the marriage was unhappy. Lee began an affair with Polish aristocrat Stash Radziwill, who had come to London in 1946. He was 19 years her junior, but his old-world manners, wealth and aristocratic connections seduced the young American.
Back home, Jackie's marriage was also troubled. In 1955 she suffered a miscarriage, and the following August came the heartache of a stillbirth. Her husband did not allow these setbacks, or his chronic health problems, to get in the way of his favorite pastime.
Kennedy liked women, who were a diversion that took his mind off things. He drank sparingly and did not really smoke, and his behavior was, in part, a male Kennedy trait. Jackie was well aware of his infidelities and took a European view that as long as he came back to her and her children, that was what mattered.
In London, Lee left Michael Canfield to begin a new life with Stash Radziwill. She was already pregnant when the couple married on March 19, 1959. They moved into a house near Buckingham Palace, and Lee immediately began renovating.
In July 1960, Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for president, with Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. He began his campaign against Republican opponent Richard Nixon in what would become the closest presidential race since 1916.
Jackie was pregnant again, but that was not the only reason behind her limited role in the campaign. Kennedy's Irish circle feared she was too exotic, too European, too French and too upper-class for the average American woman, so they kept her off the stage for a long time.
They soon learned she was his greatest asset. She spoke Italian to Italian audiences in Boston, opened a speech in Louisiana with "Mes amis" and finished it in French, and told of her own French heritage. Her role was to be the princess-in-waiting and to give a touch of class to what was sometimes sordid, boring stuff.
On November 8, 1960, Kennedy won the narrowest of victories. Jackie would be the new First Lady of the United States at just 31 years old. She was frightened of the White House and disliked the title First Lady, which she thought sounded like a horse.
The morning after the win, she put on an old raincoat and walked alone on the beach, because she knew history, politics and that her life would change. Seventeen days after the election, she gave birth to John F. Kennedy Jr., a younger brother for Caroline. The new baby had underdeveloped lungs and spent his first weeks in an incubator.
Lee was also facing the difficulties of a premature birth. Her second child had been born three months early, which meant she could not travel to Washington for Kennedy's inauguration. As Lee struggled with depression, Jackie adapted to life as an international celebrity.
The press adored Jackie's photogenic youth and style. When she accompanied her husband on his first trip overseas, there was as much attention on her as on the president. Newspapers christened her "The First Lady of Fashion."
Jackie made it her business to connect with people when she represented the U.S. abroad. She studied not just a country's culture but how its people dressed and the colors they liked. When she went to India, she wore pink, because fashion editor Diana Vreeland told her pink was the navy blue of India.
The spectacular success of the overseas tour must have been difficult for Lee, whose superior sense of style had always distinguished her from Jackie. It was now Jackie who was the international style icon. Lee's marriage to Stash Radziwill was souring too, and amid this unhappiness she began an affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Meanwhile, Jackie was asked to accompany her husband on a visit to Texas. Despite her success abroad, doubts remained about her rapport with a domestic audience. It would be this trip that would have a devastating impact on her life.
Lee was at home in London on November 22, 1963, when the news from Dallas broke. Jackie's husband, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated. Jackie was next to her husband in an open convertible when he was shot.
The assassination was a world event, and it was unfathomable how anyone could live through it. Jackie and her husband had made so many plans for the future and for bettering the country, and then it was over. It was not only the loss of her husband, but the end of the White House and all the dreams that went with it.
Lee flew to Washington at once and was at her sister's side throughout the days that followed. The funeral took place on November 25, 1963. Kennedy's flag-draped coffin had lain in state at the U.S. Capitol, where thousands queued to pay their respects. A requiem mass was held at St. Matthew's Cathedral, and the president was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Jackie's calm and dignified demeanor won her widespread respect. A British reporter said she gave the American people something they had never had before: majesty. She became a saint who could do no wrong.
Jackie was scarred by what she had witnessed. She retold her account of the assassination again and again in grim detail. Barely sleeping, she became depressed and suicidal. Her sister Lee was a great support, but JFK's younger brother Bobby understood better than the rest and became a surrogate father figure to Jackie's children.
As the months passed, the American people yearned to leave the trauma of Kennedy's death behind. Lee also wished to move on. She had often felt hemmed in by her unofficial role in the presidential family, and now she could carve out a life of her own.
The writer Truman Capote, a friend of Lee, counted her among the beautiful and glamorous women he called his swans. He pushed her into an acting career for which she had no formal training. On the first night of her run as the lead in "The Philadelphia Story" in 1967, Lee was paralyzed with fear. The reviews were terrible. After one further attempt in a panned TV movie for ABC in early 1968, she left acting for good.
Jackie, meanwhile, tried to rebuild her life. She moved away from Washington and bought an apartment in Manhattan at 1040 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. With her two children, she attempted to settle into a life away from politics.
Still very much in the public consciousness, she became a target for photographer Ron Galella, one of the few paparazzi based in New York. He was obsessed with her and sold pictures of her to fan magazines for as much as $1,000 a cover.
Jackie was still trying to come to terms with the death of JFK when her suffering deepened in the summer of 1968, after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel. It was a year of complete social upheaval in the U.S., with riots in the streets of Detroit, New York and Washington D.C. Jackie was terrified, saying that if they were killing Kennedys, her children were next.
Just four months after Bobby Kennedy's assassination, Jackie remarried. Her new husband was the 62-year-old Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, her sister Lee's former lover. The marriage took most people by surprise and caused dismay among the Kennedy family. The Vatican frowned on it as well.
Onassis had been to the White House and was one of the first visitors there after the assassination. Many believed he was always looking for an angle with Jackie, and it was only after Robert Kennedy's assassination that he felt he had a window to pursue her.
Onassis offered Jackie security and privacy. He owned an island and a yacht where he could sail her away from her troubles. But her relationship with him would cause a rift in the close bond between Jackie and her sister. Lee had hoped to marry him herself, and her marriage to Prince Radziwill was winding down.
The American people had loved Jackie and put her on a pedestal. When she wanted to marry Onassis, she was warned she would be taken off that pedestal. She replied that it was cold and lonely up there and that she did not care.
Her new marriage initially changed the public's perception of Jackie. As the relationship went on, she went from being Jackie Kennedy, the grieving widow, to Jackie O, global fashion icon. Wherever she traveled, sorrow seemed to find her.
Jackie made New York home for herself and her children, though her husband never took permanent residence there. Life on the Upper East Side offered some privacy, but she remained a prime target for paparazzi. Knowing that pictures with her face covered were less desirable, she often wore oversized dark sunglasses.
Ron Galella's growing obsession became uncomfortably invasive, but his persistence gave the world one of the most iconic images of Jackie. He photographed her crossing Fifth Avenue from a taxi, and when the driver blew the horn, she turned and gave him a Mona Lisa smile. When she recognized him, she put on her glasses and walked on. She later asked him, "Are you pleased with yourself?"
Ron's constant presence caused Jackie increasing distress. She understood that images of her were part of her celebrity, but she craved anonymity for her children. On a number of occasions she had her security chase him away. The result was an ongoing dispute that lasted nearly a decade.
After Ron photographed John Jr. and Jackie on bicycles, she told an agent to smash his camera. Two agents took his film, and he was booked on harassment of Jackie. The judge dismissed the case. Ron then sued her for interfering in his livelihood as a photojournalist in a 1972 trial that lasted 26 days. He lost, and was issued a restraining order forbidding him from photographing Jackie within 25 feet.
Her marriage to Onassis was becoming difficult, and he had returned to his womanizing ways. Tragedy also seemed to follow Jackie. In 1973, Aristotle's son Alexander was killed in a plane crash. Onassis was devastated, and he began drinking heavily aboard the Christina. He came to believe that Jackie was bad luck, that she was the black widow and that his son's death was her fault.
Onassis entered a terrible decline. By the time of his death, just two years later, the relationship with Jackie was effectively over. The sisters were nearing middle age. Lee's marriage to Stash Radziwill had also ended in divorce, and she still struggled to escape her sister's shadow.
Lee was perceived as a socialite in New York, somewhat aimless. She always had projects, a book or a cause, but nothing that really caught fire. Jackie, by contrast, was in a much steadier place.
Following the death of Onassis, Jackie again faced the task of rebuilding her life. This time it would be different. Now 45, she decided she would no longer rely on others to rescue or protect her. She would help herself, and she would go back to work.
March 1975 was a turning point in the life of Jacqueline Onassis, the first time in a long time that she did not need to be defined by being a wife. She worked for two publishing houses, Viking and Doubleday, and both said she was a brilliant editor.
She was done being in the public eye. After JFK's assassination, Robert Kennedy's death and the drama of being married to Onassis, she wanted a quiet life, and book publishing offered that. She was a woman who did not need the money but was searching for meaning, and she loved the work.
Gradually, Jackie found a measure of long sought-after peace. In the 1980s she began a new relationship with her financial advisor, Maurice Tempelsman. He was steady and reliable and, most importantly, put Jackie first, quite the opposite of Kennedy and Onassis.
Tempelsman was also instrumental in securing Jackie's privacy. Although Ron Galella had been issued a restraining order in 1972, by 1980 he was clearly flouting it. Maurice reported him, and a second trial followed. Ron admitted he was guilty and faced a $125,000 fine or seven years in jail. He surrendered and agreed to stop photographing Jackie, John Jr. and Caroline for the rest of their lives.
Jackie lived and worked in New York for the last 25 years of her life. She died of lymphatic cancer on May 19, 1994, at her home in Manhattan with her family around her. She took an active role in the city she called home, saving Grand Central Station from demolition and bringing the Temple of Dendur to the Metropolitan Museum.
At her funeral, Senator Ted Kennedy, her brother-in-law, said that no one they knew had a better sense of self than Jackie. She was admired and revered as a historical figure, a hard worker and not just a rich leech. She was a woman of real depth and real intelligence, though many could not get past her beauty, her jet-setting ways and her dark sunglasses.
The story of Lee Radziwill, however, is still being written. A constant on the New York social scene, she carved out a niche for herself as a true fashion icon and could still be seen on the front rows of catwalks around the globe. If Jackie was America's Queen, then Lee is the closest thing to royalty the U.S. has.
There was always that thing with sisters, comparing lives, but they both admired each other. They were very much foils of each other, very different individuals who led very different lives. Jackie will always be the sister who was out front, and Lee the one standing behind in the shadows. After Jackie's death, Lee became the thing she dreaded most: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' sister. She is the sister of Jackie O.