Lee Radziwill RIP: American Royalty

We don't have royalty in America -- after all, our entire nation, our constitution, was founded in complete opposition to monarchy, and we are the first real and most successful modern republic since Rome.

But still, there are some people who, if we had a monarchy, would certainly qualify as royalty.

No one defined American royalty more than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Gorgeous, glamorous, patron of the arts and good causes, she was the First Lady of the United States, wife of the handsome, doomed President John Kennedy, a woman who knew great joy and tragedy in her life. After JFK's death, she moved to New York, married again (badly), and then, towards the end of her life, worked for a living as a book editor. She lived, she loved, she reached the heights of glamorous, money, and power, and she worked -- Jackie Kennedy was certainly "royal" in many ways but she was as American as a person can get.

Her sister Lee Radziwill almost did her one better -- she actually married into royalty and, like her sister Jackie, was a patron of good causes, the arts, and NYC. She was a pillar of society, a grande dame of NYC, and, now that she has died, the last of her kind -- the final connection to Camelot. 

Also, she and Jackie were cousins with the Beales, the wacky old lady and her daughter featured in the brilliant documentary Grey Gardens.