Edward Kennedy's death has left America's greatest political dynasty without an obvious heir and brings down the curtain on an era of power, glamour and tragedy that captivated the world.
Ted Kennedy was the last of the legendary brothers, who included assassinated president John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, slain on the campaign trail as he sought to follow JFK's footsteps into the White House.
"This is the end of an era is so many ways," said Norman Ornstein, from the American Enterprise Institute. "There is no junior Kennedy coming forward who will have anywhere near the force of John, or Bobby (Robert), or Ted."
Is there a logical Kennedy heir? "The answer is no," Stephen Hess, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington and author of "America's Political Dynasties", said.
Ted's son Patrick, a US congressman for Rhode Island, is the only remaining Kennedy to hold elected office, but he is considered a lightweight political figure in comparison.
Caroline Kennedy, the last surviving child of John F. Kennedy, aborted a bid in January to take the US Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton when she became secretary of state.
The political ambitions of Joseph Kennedy, eldest son of Robert Kennedy, have been blighted by personal problems to the extent that he too is considered unlikely to pick up the mantle.
"It's a relatively flat moment right now. Patrick is in office, the only one who has public office. Joe Junior fell off the track in Massachusetts for personal reasons, Caroline proved that elective politics was not her thing," said Mr Hess.
"I think it was a point of time when America needed to believe. I think that the Kennedys were truly like American royalty, people enjoyed following their lives," explained Ted Kennedy biographer Kerrily Sapet.
Lisa McElroy, an associate professor at the Drexel University Law School in Philadelphia who also penned a biography of Ted, agreed that the power and vision of the Kennedys would live on despite the loss of the patriarch.
"It is less looking to the Kennedys as royalty and more looking at the great things that they were able to accomplish, and people in America really respecting and appreciating that."
For McElroy the Kennedys can be defined by JFK's bold words in 1961 that America would try to land a man on the moon, not because such things "are easy, but because they are hard."
Ted Kennedy was the youngest of nine children born to Rose and Joe Kennedy - patriarchs of a clan that would mark 20th century US history with both triumph and tragedy.
Of four dashing Kennedy brothers, the oldest, Joseph, was killed in a plane crash during World War II. President John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Robert, a US senator, were both felled by assassins' bullets in episodes that cast shadows over the hope-filled idealism of the 1960s.