They call it the House of Camelot, after King Arthur's palace of gallant knights and heroic figures, a metaphor for a time of idyllic happiness. But from the very beginning, interspersed the aura of magnetic power and joie de vivre that went with the Kennedy name was the blight of unexpected tragedy. Tragedy after tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. Today, the name Kennedy might as well be a metaphor forfamilial misfortune.

It all began in 1914, when the patriarch Joe Kennedy, son of an Irish immigrant, married Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of a Boston Irish aristocracy. Ambitious and unscrupulous, Kennedy made a fortune and coveted power, of which he got a first taste when he was made ambassador to the Court of St James in 1937.

He sired nine children, and the from the very beginning, the clan alternated between success and tragedy. His anointed heir Joseph P Kennedy was killed in a plane crash in 1944 during World War II even as a young JFK was schooling for politics. Rosemary Kennedy, the third sibling, was institutionalised because of retardation and a failed lobotomy, while the fourth, Kathleen Kennedy, also died in a plane crash in 1948.

Through the fifties, the family fortunes rose as JFK confidently navigated the course of Congressional politics under the benign eye and shadow connections of the paterfamilias. When Jack Kennedy spectacularly ascended the Presidency at the turn of what was going tobe another tragic decade for the family, the patriarch himself signaled it when he was paralysed by a stroke ``struck mute at the height of his glory,'' as one writer put it.

The assassination of JFK in 1963 at the height of his popularity, and that of his brother RFK on the threshold of Presidency in 1968, is too well chronicled. In subsequent years, the younger Kennedys tainted the family history with excesses and indulgences that added notoriety to the glamour and mystique. All of RFK's sons courted disrepute: Joseph was involved in a car accident that left a female passenger paralysed for life; Robert Jr was busted on a drug charge; David died of a drug overdose; and Michael, accused of having an affair with a teenage baby-sitter, died in a skiing accident on New Year's Eve 1997.

Meanwhile, their uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, the youngest and only Kennedy sibling to live a full life, had already muddied his career with an accident in which he drove off a bridge with a woman (who was subsequentlyfound dead in the submerged car), while another cousin was charged with rape at the family's Palm Beach estate (he was subsequently acquitted).

JFK Jr, also known as John-John, seemed to break the mould. Although burdened by the family's talismanic name, he lived life as a regular guy. His only excesses seemed confined to a succession of beautiful girlfriends till he married one in 1996. But with his perfect pedigree and rugged good looks, he was the principal heir to the Kennedy name, despite abjuring full-time politics and the success of his cousin Patrick (Edward Kennedy's son) who became a Congressman.

To be sure, it was never easy. Tabloids roasted him in his testosterony years. When he failed his bar exams, one rag exclaimed `Hunk Flunks.' People magazine put him on cover under the title `The Sexiest Man Alive.' And when he launched George magazine four years ago, Washington's punditocracy sneered.

Yet he carried the burden of fame and misfortune quite easily. It was a trait he had shown as earlyas three. In what is possible the most famous film footage ever shown hundreds of times across the world since Friday night's mishap and one that brings a universal lump to the throat, you sees a toddler essaying an immaculate salute at the funeral casket of his slain father. Strong men, already crushed by JFK's assassination, are said to have broken down and wept at the sight.

Much later, it fell on Maude Shaw, the family nanny, to explain his father's assassination to the little boy. ``Your father has gone to look after Patrick,'' she told him, referring to JFK's second child and Junior's brother who died soon after birth. ``Patrick was so lonely in heaven. He didn't know anyone there. Now he has the best friend anyone could have.''Junior squinted at her and asked, ``Did Daddy take his big plane with him?''