Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy — Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty Image

Like so many of you, I’ve been streaming “Love Story” on Hulu, the series chronicling the relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. While the story isn’t told entirely from Carolyn’s perspective, it’s the first time I’ve truly paused to consider the quiet costs of her life, beyond its tragic ending.

Imagine this, Daryl Hannah is your husband’s ex, and the legacy of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis looms as your mother-in-law. The comparisons would be relentless. The tabloids would dissect your every hemline and haircut, parsing whether you measure up to both Hollywood AND American royalty beauty standards. Carolyn wasn’t marrying a man; she was marrying a into a dynasty..

Jackie, after all, set the gold standard for composure under scrutiny. She endured public tragedy with poise, cultivating a style and mystique that defined modern elegance. Carolyn, by contrast, entered the family in an era of paparazzi frenzy and 24-hour media. Where Jackie had a measure of distance, Carolyn faced flashbulbs on the sidewalks of Tribeca (and pretty much everywhere else she went.) Yet the parallels are striking: both women were scrutinized for what they wore and how they behaved. Forced to play a part before they could claim their own identities.

And then there was John himself. He was still grappling with who he was even though the world assumed it already knew. What does it mean to support a partner who is, on a deeply personal level, still searching for himself? Especially when his very name carries the weight of the world’s scrutiny. Carolyn wasn’t just a wife; she was expected to be stabilizer, stylist and emotional anchor.

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From the outside, we saw the photos of the Barbie-and-Ken couple gliding through New York, effortlessly chic. But Love Story reveals how fraught many of those moments were. Not glamorous. Not enviable. Occasionally tragic, depicted in a scene when John pauses to halfheartedly sign an autograph, loses hold of his dog’s leash, and the animal is struck by a car. A real-life metaphor for the perils of fame.

And yet, in the end, it wasn’t any of this that killed them. Or was it? Was it their desire for privacy that led them onto that small, ill-fated plane? Or was it John’s confidence, perhaps hubris, shaped by a legacy that blurred the line between destiny and invincibility? It forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about celebrity, autonomy, and whether anyone would knowingly choose such an existence.

One throughline, for both Jackie and Carolyn, was ownership of their personal style. The effortless, feminine chic that we now call “quiet luxury” would not exist today without them. Perhaps it was easy and innate for them to pull off. Or perhaps, it was a careful declaration of control throughout the turmoil of their lives.

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