In the popular imagination there lingers an idea of the Kennedy White House as a modern-day Camelot, a place where beautiful and courageous people enjoyed glamorous lives of adventure and idealistic public service. O’Reilly and Dugard characterize this idea as both myth and reality. In Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy appears as the central figure in the Camelot narrative, as well as its chief architect. Camelot is both a representation of her deepest wishes and a reality that she helps will into existence.

As a myth, Camelot grows out of Jackie’s anxieties and pain. Unlike her husband, who craves action and attention, Jackie prefers keeping to herself. She does not trust easily, maintains a pack-a-day smoking habit to curb her anxieties, and already has endured the loss of two children, one by miscarriage and another to stillbirth. Most painful of all are the president’s frequent extramarital affairs. Jackie has known about her husband’s indiscretions for many years, and she remains outwardly stoic, but “her friends notice the quiet sadness about her marriage” and even her Secret Service protectors “can see that the First Lady is suffering” (67).