THE CURTAIN finally may be dropping on Camelot after a 42-year run.

In this election cycle alone, four Kennedy progeny, either by bloodline or extension, were ejected from elective politics by defeat or withdrawal. And another two were forced to the sidelines, done in by their own misadventures.

Only Edward F. Kennedy, celebrating his silver jubilee as a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts, and his son Patrick, who survived to win a fifth term as a Rhode Island congressman after an embarrassing series of frat-boy botches and blunders, still wear the epaulets of elective office.

Camelot, as every Broadway musical aficionado knows, is the name attached to the administration of President John F. Kennedy by his wife, Jacqueline. It is the mythical site of King Arthur's court and a place of idyllic happiness filled with beautiful, virtuous people.

Say what?

For the Kennedy offspring, politics is a family board game. Right here in Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland's lieutenant governor, holds the family record of having lost not one but two general elections -- her recent run for a rM-isumM-i upgrade to governor and her misbegotten campaign for Congress in 1986. No Kennedy had ever lost an election before.

Thirty-five minutes to the south on Interstate 95 in Maryland's 8th Congressional District, Ms. Townsend's cousin, Mark Shriver -- offspring of Sargent and Eunice (nee Kennedy) Shriver -- was handed his head in a bruising primary loss to Christopher Van Hollen, who went on to decapitate eight-term Republican Rep. Constance A. Morella on Nov. 5.

In New York, Andrew Cuomo, a political princeling in his own right but nonetheless married to Kerry Kennedy, Ms. Townsend's sister, was eased out of the New York governor's race by that eminent role model, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton had applied the elbow in an effort to clear the pathway for another Democratic candidate for governor, state Comptroller H. Carl McCall. Mr. McCall was defeated by Gov. George Pataki.

Next comes Max Kennedy, another of Ms. Townsend's brothers who's among the season's political arrivals and departures. Mr. Kennedy materialized from the vapors to announce that he was a candidate to succeed the late Rep. Joseph Moakley from Massachusetts' 9th Congressional District.

Mr. Kennedy's political rM-isumM-i was a blank slate. He didn't live in Boston's Southie 9th, and to run he had to shop for real estate in the appropriate ZIP code. But Max had another problem: His brother, Joseph Kennedy II, who had been considering running for governor of Massachusetts after being forced out of Congress by an embarrassing series of marital disclosures.

Though the decks were cleared for Mr. Kennedy when brother Joseph decided to remain a private citizen rather than risk having his extracurricular adventures become a public soap opera, Max Kennedy flubbed his announcement speech so badly that he had to abandon his run for Congress.

According to one Boston Globe story, Mr. Kennedy was unable to recall what year he graduated from law school or exactly where or what he's a resident of. He runs another of those family nonprofit corporations, the Watershed Institute, funded in part by his wife's family money (she's a Strauss).

Finally, there's Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose private life makes occasional tabloid filler. He rescues contaminated rivers through his foundation, Hudson Riverkeeper. RFK Jr. was the New York Democratic Party's preference to run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by his father until Hillary Clinton interloped on the New York political lifescape in 2000 and pushed him aside.

Patrick Kennedy, for his part, has admitted that he has taken prescription drugs for depression; he was accused of assaulting an airport security officer. Next came reports of trashing a rented yacht to the high-pitched tune of $28,000. Finally, a Coast Guard boat came to the rescue during an argument with a girlfriend on the same rented yacht -- all according to Fox News and The Providence Journal. He nonetheless won re-election in his gilded Great Gatsby district.

So the myth of Camelot is dying if not dead. Long live the myth. And a good part of it was buried right here in Maryland this year.

Frank A. DeFilippo, press secretary to former Gov. Marvin Mandel, has been writing about Maryland politics for 40 years.