My mother’s love for young Macron was embarrassing, says daughter
Tiphaine Auzière reveals teasing over age gap and hits out at trolls who claim first lady was born a man
BRIGITTE MACRON’S daughter has admitted she suffered because of small town gossip when her mother left her father for the then teenage Emmanuel Macron.
Tiphaine Auzière, 40, who is releasing a novel based on her experiences as a lawyer, also said she was sick of trolls claiming that her mother was born a man.
In an interview with Paris Match, Ms Auzière, the youngest of the French first lady’s three children, spoke in gushing terms of her “adored mother and stepfather”.
Mr Macron is only six years Ms Auzière’s senior, and he is younger than her two siblings. She confessed that it had not been easy dealing with wagging tongues in her home town of Amiens in northern France.
Mr Macron was 15 years old when he fell for his married drama teacher, Brigitte Auzière – then 40 – at the Catholic Providence school in the early 1990s.
Ms Auzière’s older sister Laurence was the future French president’s classmate. She was just nine at the time and would go on to attend the school.
“A separation is painful, but when there is something particular, it’s even more painful,” Ms Auzière said. “I learned a lot about human nature. I know that, at times like these, you have to focus on what’s essential and move forward regardless of criticism.
She added: “The attacks, the backbiting, the judgments. It wasn’t yet the age of social networking, but we were in a small provincial town. People knew everything.”
Ms Auzière said she found respite from small-town life and gossip in horse riding, her passion since the age of two.
In November, Mrs Macron, 70, admitted it was concern for her children that prompted her to put off her marriage to her former pupil for 10 years.
She said she also thought Mr Macron “fall in love with someone his [own] age”.
“The only obstacle was my children,” she told Paris Match. “I took time so I would not wreck their lives.
“That lasted 10 years, the time to put them on the rails. You can imagine what they were hearing. But I didn’t want to miss out on my life.”
Ms Auzière said she bore no grudges against her mother or stepfather for the age gap in their relationship.
“A family break-up can be both a heartbreak and an opportunity. Mixing families together can be enriching. I have an adored mother and stepfather,” she said.
Mrs Macron divorced her estranged husband, André-louis Auzière, a banker, in 2006 and married Mr Macron a year later, when he was a young civil servant.
Her son is now 49, and her older daughter 47. Mr Auzière died in 2019 a virtual recluse without ever giving an interview.
Ms Auzière also hit out at social media trolls who claimed in 2022 that her mother, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, is a transgender woman whose name at birth was Jean-michel.
Ms Macron, along with her children and brother, sued two women for posting the rumours, and a criminal investigation is still ongoing.
Ms Auzière said: “I don’t feel any pain, just anger at the misinformation. I worry about the level of society when I hear what is circulating on social networks about my mother being a man.
“The aplomb of what is said and the credibility given to what is proclaimed. Anyone can say anything about anyone, and it takes time to get it withdrawn.”
She said little about Mr Macron, except to say: “Perhaps this is less and less apparent, but I find my stepfather very humanist.”