“If you sit by the river long enough, you’ll see the bodies of your enemies float by,” says one of Sun Tzu’s wisest proverbs about how revenge works: you don’t need to do anything but wait for reality itself to answer for you.

That is certainly the case for Jennifer Aniston, who at 56 poses in sheer Saint Laurent outfits for the cover of Vanity Fair, sexier and more beautiful than ever, having proven she never had to do a thing to get revenge on the fateful duo Angelina Jolie–Brad Pitt.

She can simply watch their tragic legal battles from her soft and cozy Beverly Hills villa sofa—reference not accidental—stating that it was a difficult experience but that she ultimately told herself: “Stand tall and move on, girl. Show who you are!” And she did.

See if I’m coming

The three famous stars, who haven’t lost an inch of their glamour or sex appeal to their countless fans, naturally still remain relevant: twenty years after the much-publicized divorce that cost millions and countless covers to Aniston–Pitt, and even more to Jolie–Pitt, the most spectacular triangle in recent Hollywood history still dominates the news.

The wronged sweetheart of Friends, with her Greek grit and natural ease, seemed—at least at the beginning of the scandal—unable to cope with the tabloids that never stopped portraying her as the ultimate victim. “The story sold a lot and it was spicy for the public,” Aniston admits twenty years later, finally breaking her silence in her interview in the current issue of Vanity Fair, where she graces the undeniably impressive cover.

“Instead of soap operas, they had tabloids and covers with the story. It’s a shame all this had to happen, but it did. The truth is I took it very personally and very hard. But I told myself to stand tall and move on.”

“No marriage breaks down because of only one person’s fault. Tango requires two dancers. Surely when the crisis with Brad came, we were spending too much time absorbed in our careers,” Aniston told Vanity Fair.

Although she outwardly didn’t give up, trying herself in new relationships and other projects, it was far from easy seeing her ex-husband—whom she hadn’t managed to have children with—selling, for generous sums, exclusive photos of his children with Jolie to magazines and declaring how happy he was in his new marriage.

The first clouds over Pitt and Jolie’s marriage came from the extreme decision of the new wife to cut her husband off from his closest friends. Seeing in George Clooney’s wife, Amal Alamuddin, a beautiful rival, Jolie not only forbade her husband from visiting the couple but even banned him from attending their wedding in Venice.

The media had already begun to wonder whether she was to blame for the strained relationship between Pitt and his longtime buddy Clooney. A series of negative circumstances followed, climaxing with Jolie’s fragile health—she had already undergone a preventive double mastectomy to avoid the illness that had taken her mother’s life.

In 2015 she even went through preventive removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes after blood tests showed cancer risk. Brad Pitt boarded the first plane from France, where he was vacationing, to be by his wife’s side. But clouds had already begun to gather over the sunny Los Angeles sky: the couple disappeared from the public eye for nearly a year, with the official excuse being that they were working on joint projects. But the money invested in the hugely popular couple “Brangelina”—as the media had dubbed them—was too great for them to rush into divorce.

In contrast, the following year was one of the best for Aniston, as she starred simultaneously in The Yellow Birds, Dreams in High Heels, and the series The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon, which made history.

Best friends with Pitt’s exes

Today, at 56, Aniston negotiates differently with films she produces herself. In addition to The Morning Show, she has taken on the production of five more “female” projects in TV and cinema. She says she was very lucky over the years to have been supported by her friends, her manager Aleen Keshishian, and her psychoanalyst, who all kept her from getting too entangled in the toxicity of a love triangle: no negative statements, no defeatism.

It was a strategy that paid off: while her ex-husband, guided by Jolie, insisted on saying how unhappy he was with Aniston, she declared just a year after their divorce that she held no grudge—earning many points in Hollywood’s fiercely competitive world. Also, in an industry where friendship is rare, she gained loyal friends—her best friend Sandra Bullock saying Aniston is “the best thing that ever happened to her” and crashing her interviews with tequila and lemons.

Even Brad Pitt’s ex, Gwyneth Paltrow, would hang out with her for relaxed chats and long phone calls. “We are women who support each other, and of course, as women, we also comment on Brad,” Jennifer admitted in her recent Vanity Fair interview.

“No marriage breaks down because of only one person’s fault. Tango requires two dancers. Surely when the crisis with Brad came, we were spending too much time absorbed in our careers,” Aniston said, refusing the role of victim. She admits, however, that she will never forgive him for choosing to move forward with Jolie at the very time she was finishing Friends and was in depression.

Today she recalls with nostalgia all those Greek holidays she hated as a child, having to follow along, enduring her relatives’ coarse jokes and scenes straight out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But it was she who decided—at Pitt’s urging, honoring her Greek heritage—to have bouzouki music at their wedding, with the groom unsuccessfully trying to learn the zeibekiko.

“It was difficult to visit Greece, though, since we had to hide in tinted-window jeeps,” Aniston says in her interview, finally admitting that while the wedding may have been over the top, they had the time of their lives believing the new millennium—married in July 2000—was starting for them in the best way. Neither of them could have imagined then the unpredictable factor named Angelina.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

The first meeting between Jolie and Pitt happened on the set of Friends, with Pitt openly declaring his admiration—right in front of his wife. At one point Aniston herself called Jolie to say how happy she was that she would be working with her husband in the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith and that she believed the film would be a huge success.

Aniston herself once phoned Jolie to tell her how happy she was that she would be working with her husband in Mr. & Mrs. Smith and that she believed the film would be a big hit.

The long hours Jolie and Pitt spent on set made them realize their chemistry was unbeatable. Love struck like lightning, and despite their categorical denials of the tabloids’ claims that something was going on between them, the divorce that followed between Brad and Jennifer was undeniable proof that Jolie was the scandal’s centerpiece.

The joint statement by Brad and Jennifer—that their separation had nothing to do with what the tabloids claimed—convinced no one. Aniston’s efforts to keep the divorce out of the spotlight, asking Pitt to keep a low profile and avoid public appearances with the third party, were in vain.

A few months later Us Weekly published photos of Brad and Angelina on a happy vacation in Kenya. “The world was shocked, and so was I,” Aniston told Vanity Fair. More photos followed with their adopted daughter Zahara from Ethiopia and a beaming Pitt at Jolie’s side. Within months, news broke that Jolie was expecting a girl, and soon after they adopted Pax from Vietnam.

The children of the new wife seemed to avenge Aniston’s childlessness, as on top of infidelity she now had to face her ex-husband’s kids constantly gracing magazine covers. Jolie would become pregnant again, this time giving birth to twins Knox and Vivienne in Nice, France, once again selling their photos to a major magazine.

Faced with such relentless coverage, Jennifer needed vast reserves of patience and many hours of therapy to keep her composure and move on with her life.

Today, Joanna-Genovefa Anastasakis, as her real name is, finally declares herself happy both professionally and personally (she is in a relationship with hypnotherapist Jim Curtis). For the first time since her split from Justin Theroux, she can sincerely say in Vanity Fair that she regrets nothing and feels very lucky to have married Brad—even while Angelina Jolie considers it the worst thing that ever happened to her.

In the end, the best answer to triangles isn’t resolving them, but the joyful realization that one side eventually feels it was never part of the equation at all. And Jennifer Aniston, as she says, unlike Brad Pitt who is still embroiled in legal battles with Jolie, was always good at math.