15 Weird Facts About Jackie Kennedy's Relationship With Ethel Kennedy

15 Weird Facts About Jackie Kennedy's Relationship With Ethel Kennedy They were both Kennedy wives. They could not have been more different from each other. And they had to share a world that was barely large enough for one of them. Ethel Skakel Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy occupied the same family, the same compound, the same social world, and — after Dallas — the same specific and impossible grief of loving and losing Kennedy men to the same violent American century. They were sisters-in-law for a decade before the first assassination and they remained connected by blood and by history and by the children they had each produced for the Kennedy family for the rest of their lives. But the connection was never warmth, exactly. It was something more complicated than warmth and more enduring than conflict. It was the relationship of two women who were completely unlike each other in every meaningful dimension — in temperament, in aesthetic, in their relationship to the Kennedy family culture, in their understanding of what a woman's life should contain — who were permanently bound together by the same man they had each loved in their different ways. Ethel had adored Bobby with the specific and total devotion of a woman who had organized her entire existence around her husband and the family they were building together. Jackie had loved JFK in the complicated and evolving way of a woman who had entered an arrangement and discovered, over a decade, that the arrangement had become something she genuinely valued. Both had lost the men. Both had kept going. The keeping going had looked very different from each of them. The difference was the relationship. Here are fifteen of the most significant facts about one of the most complex and least examined relationships in the Kennedy world.They were both Kennedy women, but they could not have been more different. Explore the complex dynamic between Jackie and Ethel.Ethel Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy occupied the same compound, the same social world, and after the tragedy in Dallas, the same impossible grief. They were sisters-in-law for a decade before the first assassination, yet their connection was never simple. It was the relationship of two individuals who were completely unlike each other in every meaningful dimension, from their temperament to their understanding of what a life should contain, yet they were permanently bound together by the men they had loved.The Kennedy family culture required them to exist in the same orbit, even as their approaches to survival diverged sharply. Ethel adored Bobby with total devotion, organizing her existence around their family, while Jackie navigated a complicated arrangement that evolved over time. Both women lost their husbands to violence, and both kept going, though their paths looked entirely different. Here are fifteen of the most significant facts about the relationship between two women who helped define an American dynasty.Subscribe for weekly historical breakdowns, and comment below which public figure you want us to research next.