For any family, the sudden ԁеаtһ of a 27-year-old man is a terrible tragedy.
For the Presley family, the ԁеаtһ of Lisa Marie’s son, Elvis and Priscilla’s grandson, Brandon Keough, stands out, but it also the latest in a series of intrigues, dramas and tragedies to befall the family often referred to as American royalty.
Elvis was already famous when he was drafted into the US army and sent to Friedbert, Germany.
It was there he met Priscilla Beaulieu, at a party hosted by her stepfather, a US Air Force officer, in September 1959.
Elvis was 24. Priscilla? 14.
This caused less of a scandal than you might imagine, with the pair dating until Elvis’ deployment ended the following March. They stayed in touch until 1963, when Priscilla’s parents allowed her to move to Memphis to be near Elvis. She lived with his father and stepmother a few streets away from Graceland and attended a Catholic girls school until she graduated.
Elvis and Priscilla finally married in 1967. They divorced in 1973, after Priscilla had an affair with her karate instructor.
They had one child, daughter Lisa Marie.
Priscilla had a number of high-profile relationships following her split from Elvis, including with OJ Simpson’s lawyer and father of the eponymous reality TV family, Robert Kardashian, photographer Terry O’Neill and, reportedly, Tom Jones.
One of her longest was with male model and sometime actor Michael Edwards, who she began dating in 1978 and eventually lived with for a number of years.
According to Edwards’ memoir, their relationship came to an end in part because he developed a strong attraction to the then-teenage Lisa Marie.
Elvis’ ԁеаtһ
There was and continues to be a lot of debate over Elvis’ ԁеаtһ, notably what role drugs played in it and, in some corners of the internet, whether it even happened at all.
We do know that his health had deteriorated in the last few years of his life and he certainly had problems with drugs dating back to his years in the service.
Whether or not he overdosed remains a matter for debate, but one thing is certain: Elvis ԁıеԁ on the toilet.
The MJ connection
Less than a month after Lisa-Marie divorced her first husband, musician Danny Keough, she married the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
The pair had reportedly been friends for a couple of years, and she had supported him when Evan Chandler accused Jackson of child molestation in 1993.
Their marriage flabbergasted the media and was the subject of much scrutiny, with many rumours suggesting it was a stunt to try to revive Jackson’s reputation in the wake of the molestation allegations.
Both parties insisted it was the real deal, but whatever the case, it was also short-lived; the pair divorced less than two years later.
Three-month marriage
Following her divorce from Michael Jackson, Lisa Marie was engaged to singer John Oszajca, but she broke it off in 2000 after meeting the actor Nicolas Cage.
They married in a lavish ceremony in Hawaii two years later but divorced after just 107 days (that’s longer than Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, but shorter than Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock).
Later, Lisa Marie would say the couple “shouldn’t have been married in the first place.”
