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IN THE White House she was an icon of style, the elegant embodiment of American aristocracy. Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy, who died 20 years ago this month, was presented to the world by her husband’s slick PR team as a blue-blood who traced her lineage back to 16th-century French nobility. But a shocking new biography reveals that the girl who grew up to be queen of President John F Kennedy’s fabled Camelot was not what she appeared. Jackie’s ancestors were peasants and her father was a bisexual alcoholic gambler who drank himself to an early grave, claims the book Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Life Beyond Her Wildest Dreams, by Danforth Prince and Darwin Porter. Before reigning over the White House Jackie had spent her youth auditioning a succession of America’s wealthiest eligible bachelors in a mercenary search for a rich husband, ultimately losing her virginity in a lift caught between floors. “Jackie’s aristocratic heritage was total fantasy in the same way that Jackie created the myth of Camelot at the White House,” says Porter. “It never existed. “She wasn’t happy in her marriage to Jack Kennedy and before he became president she wanted a divorce. Jack’s father Joe Kennedy offered her $1million to stay knowing that a divorce would destroy Jack’s political future.” Jackie was born in 1929 to Wall Street broker John Bouvier III, known to his friends and foes as “Black Jack” because of his dark complexion, destructive gambling addiction and his black heart. | 
