‘She’s wrecked my family and career’ – Royal hits out in Elysee soap opera
He was the quiet man who came to power promising to restore the dignity of the French presidency after years of lurid headlines. But the personal tribulations of Francois Hollande were exposed in even greater clarity yesterday when the mother of his four children blamed his present partner for torpedoing her political career.
The rift between the women is in danger of tainting France’s new Leftwing head of state with the same aura of unseemliness that led to the downfall of Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he replaced two months ago. The fallout was underlined when Valerie Trierweiler, the political journalist with whom he now lives, was described by her own magazine, Paris Match, as a latter-day MarieAntoinette who had embarrassed the President.
The attack came as Segolene Royal – Hollande’s former partner – accused Trierweiler of ‘‘wrecking’’ her family, and ruining her chances of reaching high office.
In an interview that gave full vent to her bitterness, Royal said that Trierweiler had meddled in her bid to win the French presidency in 2007, when she stood as the Socialist candidate and was defeated by Sarkozy.
At the time, Hollande was First Secretary of the Socialist Party and was in the process of leaving Royal for his new partner – who was covering his activities for Paris Match. Royal believes that Trierweiler’s jealousy was a decisive factor in the widely reported failure of the Socialist Party to swing behind her presidential campaign.
‘‘I tell myself that in 2007 it can’t have helped,’’ she told the weekly journal Le Point. ‘‘I understand why Francois didn’t help me.’’
Royal expressed anger over the ambiguities of Trierweiler’s role, reporting on Hollande while having an affair with him.
‘‘She exploited the situation. It was easy. She was following the Socialist Party, she was following its First Secretary. In an Anglo-Saxon country, you’d get sacked for that. But Paris Match were not unhappy to undermine me, so they left her deliberately.’’
Her comments were a riposte after Trierweiler threw a spanner into Royal’s campaign to become an MP in this month’s elections.
The President publicly backed Royal, only for France’s First Lady to publish a tweet in support of a dissident Socialist candidate, who went on to win the seat.
Royal, 58, denounced the message as an inversion of roles. ‘‘It’s me whose family was wrecked, it’s me who could have rancour,’’ she said.
Flora Hollande, 19, her youngest child with the President, had called her in tears on several occasions during the row over Trierweiler’s support for her opponent, she said.
The French media have reported that Hollande’s children are refusing to talk to the First Lady, blaming her for stabbing their mother in the back.
Royal, whose hopes of becoming France’s first woman Speaker were dashed by her failure to win the La Rochelle seat, said her life had been turned into a demeaning public melodrama.
‘‘I read articles about monarchs, their mistresses, their wives. But it’s horrible. I’m a politician, I’m fighting and I’m reduced to the level of a soap opera, of a vaudeville, of a threesome.’’
Amid concern that Hollande’s presidency could become bogged down in the mixture of high politics and low comedy, his ministers have told the First Lady to adopt a low profile.
She appeared to have cottoned on when unnamed friends were quoted in the French press as saying that she regretted her Twitter message. However, Trierweiler, 47, thrust herself back into the news yesterday with the publication of a book of photographs of Hollande’s campaign.
One photograph is of Hollande and Royal together at a political rally in April. ‘‘Are they going to kiss? Are they going to hold hands?’’ writes Trierweiler. ‘‘Those are the crucial questions that my fellow journalists are asking. Yes, the man I love had a woman before me. And it so happens that she was a presidential election candidate. I make do with that.’’