Nothing quite says "sibling rivalry" like sleeping with your presidential
brother-in-law — just ask Jackie Kennedy and her sister-slash-enemy, Princess Lee Radziwill.
The relationship between Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill had a lot of ups and downs over
the years, to say the least. They started out as the Bouvier sisters, the daughters of Janet
Lee Bouvier and Jack Vernou Bouvier. Jackie was born on July 28th, 1929, making her the elder
of the two sisters. Lee, born Caroline Lee, followed four years later on March 3th, 1933.
The sisters lived a life of luxury, spending their early days living in
the family's Manhattan apartment or relaxing at their family's estate on Long Island. While the
Bouviers seemed to be quite wealthy, Jack Bouvier had endured some financial losses
during the stock market crash of 1929. Jack and Janet's marriage started to disintegrate
under the strain. The pair separated in 1936 and finalized their divorce in 1940.
Some of the tension between Jackie and Lee may have started early on. Lee believed their
father favored Jackie, and only felt worse as Jackie so excelled at school. Jackie,
meanwhile, felt that their mother preferred Lee over her.
Eventually, the girls' mother remarried, tying the knot with Hugh D. Auchincloss,
a successful investment banker. The Bouvier sisters then spent time at
Auchincloss' mansion in Virginia and summered in Newport, Rhode Island,
where he had a large estate called Hammersmith Farm. Both sisters attended the elite Miss
Porter's School in Connecticut, but they took very different paths after graduation.
"I always hated school, but I really hated Miss Porter's."
Jackie, the more academically accomplished of the two, attended Vassar College for her first
two years of school. She then went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne for her junior year.
When Lee graduated high school, she went to Paris with Jackie. The two spent the summer
of 1951 traipsing around Europe. Through their family's numerous connections,
the sisters received introductions to diplomats and other members of
high society. This journey together may have been the closest the two would ever
be in their adult lives — and before long their sibling rivalry resurfaced.
Jackie went to Washington, D.C. after Paris, and Lee tried college life for three semesters before
dropping out of Sarah Lawrence. Jackie finished her degree at George Washington University in
1951 and worked for the Washington Times-Herald, while Lee put her savvy fashion sense to work
as an assistant to Diana Vreeland of Harper's Bazaar. In 1953, Lee married Michael Canfield,
the adopted son of the publisher of Harper & Row. Two months after Lee's wedding, however,
Jackie stole the spotlight with news of her own engagement to none other than John F. Kennedy.
"Jack was the most un-self-conscious person I've ever seen."
Jackie married Kennedy in September 1953. They quickly became a Washington power
couple as her husband's fortunes rose in the Democratic party. At the same time,
Lee's marriage began to fizzle out, and she and Canfield soon separated;
in the aftermath, Lee married Stanislaw Radziwill, an exiled Polish prince.
Despite whatever social cachet she thought she achieved with her marriage,
Lee was soon eclipsed once more by her older sister, whose husband had become
president of the United States. Lee and her husband visited the White House on several
occasions as guests of the Kennedys, and she even helped Jackie develop her iconic style.
Lee often traveled with Jackie, and she notably accompanied Jackie on her official
visit to India and Pakistan in 1962. But not everything was rosy between the two sisters.
During her second marriage, Lee engaged in several extramarital affairs, and one of her
alleged paramours was her own brother-in-law, John F. Kennedy. Lee reportedly told other
people about her tryst with Kennedy, and this news may have gotten back to Jackie. President
Kennedy wasn't the only man the sisters may have clashed over, either. Lee also got
involved with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis — and she was quite taken with him.
Lee later asked Onassis to invite Jackie on his yacht so that she could recuperate
after the death of her son Patrick, who had died barely more than a day after he
was born in 1963. After the assassination of her husband, Jackie found solace with Onassis again,
and a relationship eventually developed between the two. The pair wed in 1968,
which couldn't have helped with the tension between Jackie and Lee. But some sources
indicate that Lee actually supported Jackie's relationship with Onassis.
The financial rift between Jackie and Lee widened after Onassis's death in 1975. Jackie received $20
million from his considerable estate plus an additional $6 million to cover related taxes,
although the couple had been in divorce proceedings at the time
of his death. Jackie managed to parlay that money into a $150 million fortune.
Perhaps the most revealing insight about the rift between Jackie and
Lee surfaced after Jackie's death in 1994. In her will, Jackie left
Lee absolutely nothing. Jackie gave Lee's two children $500,000 each, but she intentionally
excluded her sister. Jackie knew that Lee had struggled financially over the years,
and she explicitly stated in her will that she had omitted her sister on purpose, because
she had provided for her during her lifetime. Jackie's will marked the final act in a deeply
complicated sisterly relationship — one that was defined as much by animosity as it was by love.
"Without memory, there's no life. And that's the way I’d feel."