As Ryan Murphy’s new mini-series focuses on their explosive relationship, aides and experts explain the real-life couple behind the myth

He only met John F Kennedy Jr for five minutes but, three decades later, the memory lingers on. “Oh my God, he had it all,” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist, recalling their encounter at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “He had his mother’s poise and his father’s charisma; it was a perfect combination of the two. If there was anybody destined to be president, it was him.”

In the US, the Kennedys occupy territory somewhere between the British royal family and Greek tragedy, a tale of impossible glamour pierced by spectacles of public mourning. More than a quarter of a century after the single-engine plane piloted by John Kennedy Jr plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing him; his wife, Carolyn Bessette; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, Camelot is being mined for content once more.