‘They were treated like they had plague ... Brigitte lost all of her closest friends’
New book reveals impact of affair on the Macrons
BRIGITTE Macron met her future husband Emmanuel when he was a teenager and was shunned by friends when they eventually formed a relationship, the first unofficial biography of the French president’s wife has revealed.
Even before its release this week, ‘Brigitte Macron, L’Affranchie’ (Brigitte Macron, the Unfettered Woman) made waves by revealing the alleged existence of an erotic novel penned by a teenage Emmanuel Macron, long before he became the country’s youngest president since Napoleon Bonaparte.
‘Closer’ journalist Maëlle Brun failed to track down that rumoured work, but did manage to interview dozens of friends and acquaintances of Ms Macron – who refused to speak to her in person.
The book recounts how then Brigitte Auzière met her future husband via her daughter Laurence who was in his class at La Providence Lycée in Amiens. He was 14 and a half and she was 38, although the book says the date their relationship started proper is “unknown and taboo”.
The daughter described him as a kind of “UFO” who “knows everything about everything” and spent more time talking to teachers than pupils.
The two clicked immediately and he would come around aged 15 with bunches of flowers to the French and drama teacher’s house.
When her then husband André-Louis Auzière, with whom she had three children, found out they were having a
relationship, he walked out “the very next day”, she recounts. The pair only divorced in 2006, however. Mr and Ms Macron married a year later.
The biography reveals how the future Ms Macron went from a pillar of provincial French bourgeoisie married to a wealthy banker and teaching in a private Catholic school to being shunned for her atypical relationship with an adolescent.
Appalled locals even denounced the relationship in anonymous letters to her parents, while others spat on their door. Both families were outraged.
An acquaintance of Ms Macron is quoted by Ms Brun as saying: “She is very tight-lipped about this topic. It is a wound she won’t talk about directly.
“But she has sometimes told me in passing that she lost all her friends. Friends with whom she went on holiday changed overnight and no longer wanted to speak to her.”
She came from a well-known local family, the Trogneux, who ran a famed cake and chocolatemaking business. “Anonymous letters were sent to them – as they were to La Providence Lycée.”
A friend of theirs even mentions the ‘spitting on the door’ to which they were subjected,” according to the biography. “Tensions were running high. The Trogneux family was scandalised,” the book says.
Mr Macron’s parents, who are both doctors, were also treated “like they had the plague” in Amiens, it adds. Mr Macron was sent to Paris to complete his education far from the local scandal.
Even before meeting Mr Macron, the book says that Brigitte had a decidedly quirky relationship with pupils, sending one boy written messages via other classmates’ pencil cases.
“The man in question is still a friend of Brigitte Macron, his wife too, and there has never been any ambiguity between them. But they had a very personal, rather unconventional rapport. As a teacher, she stood out in the local bourgeoisie,” the author told ‘l’Express’.
She was also up to date with who was going out with who in class and invited pupils over for drinks at her place. Lots of pupils spoke to her in the informal “tu” form, which was unheard of in the traditional Catholic school where she taught.
Many ex-pupils “spoke about her with a tremolo in their voice,” she said. “For them, Brigitte Macron transmitted her enthusiasm, got them out of their shell with sometimes transgressive ideas.”
The biography recounts her charmed childhood as the youngest of six who loved playing practical jokes. But tragedy struck in 1961 when her older sister died in a car accident with her husband and their daughter who was just six years old.
The biography says that the trauma helped shape Brigitte’s personality, leading her to build a protective shell around herself and turning her into the family’s “ray of sunshine”.
Long before meeting the future president, she had cut her teeth as his future unofficial spin doctor, the books says, as in 1982 aged 29 she became press secretary at the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Chamber of Commerce.
The job ended in 1984 when she and her family moved close to Truchtersheim, near Strasbourg, for her first husband’s career. There she got involved in politics in 1989 with a local group promising the opening of a skate park and rent capping for young households.
She played a key role during Mr Macron’s political rise, says the biography.
When he was economy minister from 2014 to 2016, their proximity sparked accusations from some staff members that she meddled too much.
“We had to send our notes to her at the same time as we sent them to him,” one is quoted as saying.
The author said that Ms Macron had refused to speak to her and a string of now famous friends also declined to speak.
“The Macrons keep a very tight rein on their communication,” she said.