The early months of French President Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte’s ‘forbidden’ relationship have rarely been out of the spotlight since his election in 2017.
And this week, Brigitte’s daughter 40-year-old Tiphaine Auzière, who is just six years younger than her step-father, shone a light on how she and her two older siblings really felt when a teenage Emmanuel, 17 at the time, declared he wanted to marry their drama teacher mother, then 42.
Speaking to Paris Match ahead of the release of her first novel, Auzière has revealed how she and sister Laurence, 47, and brother Sebastian, 49, – who were 17 and 19 at the time while she was just ten, faced judgement and ‘backbiting’ as news of the scandalous romance broke in their local community in the French city of Amiens.
She told the French magazine: ‘The attacks, the backbiting, the judgments. It was not yet the era of social networks, but we were in a small provincial town. Everything is known.’
President Macron, 46, and his wife Brigitte, 70 (pictured in Paris on February 21st): Brigitte’s daughter Tiphaine, a lawyer and novelist, told Paris Match magazine about how the scandal of the French president’s ‘forbidden’ relationship with her mother taught her about ‘human nature’
Tiphaine Auziere, Brigitte’s youngest daughter, said she has a close relationship with her step-father but that it had been initially hard to deal with local gossip about their the student teacher romance – which happened when she was just ten. Footage captures the moment a 15-year-old Emmanuel Macron (left) kissed his 40-year-old teacher Brigitte Trogneux (right) in 1993 – two years before he declared he wanted to marry her
The lawyer turned writer is the youngest of Brigitte’s children with her first husband André-Louis Auzière.
In a previous interview with The Times in 2017, Tiphaine said she first knew of Macron when her older sister Laurence came home from lessons one day and told Brigitte: ‘Mummy, there is a crazy boy in our class who knows everything about everything.’
Laurence, now a cardiologist, Sebastian, an engineer, and Tiphaine remain close to both their mother and step-father but Tiphaine hasn’t shied away from speaking to the media, most recently lifting the lid on what it was like to watch her mother’s initially shocking relationship unfold.
Tiphaine and her mother in 2017; The youngest daughter of the French president’s wife said she first knew of Macron when her older sister Laurence told Brigitte: ‘Mummy, there is a crazy boy in our class who knows everything about everything.’
Laurence Auziere, left, now 47, was a classmate of the future French President – who became her step-father – after falling for her mother, then Brigitte Trogneux (centre). Pictured with Tiphaine, right, supporting Emmanuel at a campaign rally in 2017
Brigitte’s son Sebastien Auziere, who was 19 – two years older than Emmanuel Macron – at the time his mother’s romance with her student began (Pictured with his wife and children at Elysee Palace in May 2017)
André-Louis Auzière had married the then Brigitte Trogneux in 1974. After years of happiness together, family life was blown apart by Brigitte’s affair.
The young Macron first met her when he was in her French and Latin classes at La Providence, a private school in Amiens.
Macron, a brilliant student, fell fast and hard for the passionate literature teacher. The two grew close, especially after Macron, then 16, joined the school’s drama club – managed by Brigitte.
French President Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte Macron have been married since 2007: Tiphaine Auziere has said in the past that his mother and step-father are ‘a vision of love’
The school was run by Jesuits – the strict Roman Catholic order – but this did not stop young Emmanuel getting together with his teacher, who ran a theatre club.
Before she met Emmanuel, Brigitte is said to have worked hard to be the perfect housewife for her banker husband, described as a ‘nice man with a strong moral compass’ by some family friends and as a ‘kill-joy’ by others.
Tiphaine said the rumours of a ‘forbidden relationship’ were horrific for all the children.
Paris Match describes how ‘young Emmanuel often rang the bell at the Auzière home and the rumours grew. Rumours which naturally had an impact on the three children of the household.’
Brigitte Macron and her daughter Tiphaine Auziere pictured in June 2017 in northern France; France’s First Lady’s daughter said she ‘gained an open mind’ when her mother and Emmanuel’s relationship came to light
Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte during King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia’s visit to Paris, on 2 June 1015
The happy couple walk down the steps at The Sacré-Coeur in Paris on 4 Sep 2016
In the most recent interview, Tiphaine, who lives close to Calais with her husband and two children, also says she watched the couple remain strong that they would stay together, in spite of the scandal surrounding their romance.
She said: ‘Despite all this, they stood tall. I gained an open mind, the desire to move forward without listening to peripheral noise, and gained greater tolerance. I learned a lot about human nature’.
Ms Auzière, who died in 2018, was particularly upset that her humiliated father, André-Louis Auzière, was forced to leave the family home in 1994, even though he did not divorce Brigitte until 2006, allowing Mr Macron to marry her a year later.
‘A family separation can be a sorrow and an opportunity,’ said Ms Auzière. ‘Recomposition can prove to be an enrichment. I have a beloved father and stepfather.’
The writer, whose new legal novel is called Assizes – in reference to a criminal court – said she was also wounded at claims on social media that Brigitte was born male.
‘I have concerns about the level of society when I hear what is circulating on social networks about my mother being a man,’ she said.
Tiphaine Auzière admits she remains wounded by the Macrons’ ‘forbidden relationship’
The couple arrive to attend a state dinner with French President Francois Hollande, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands at the Elysee Presidential Palace on 10 March 2016
‘The confidence with which it is said, and the credibility given to it is proclaimed. How can we resist disinformation on social networks?’
Brigitte Macron won a libel case against a freelance journalist who had circulated the rumours about her sex last year.
Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron have too been honest about their own relationship, describing how they fell in love after their paths crossed in the classroom.
The now French President was just 15-years-old when he met Madame Auziere, a teacher who was 24 years his senior, at Lycee La Providence in Amiens.
The teacher and her pupil had collaborated on the play The Art Of Comedy, by the Italian writer Eduardo De Filippo, every Friday night for months at the school, adapting it for all the students who wanted to take part.
As the audience clapped before the curtain came down, the teenager took a bow and kissed his teacher on each cheek as she smiled with obvious delight.
And a glimpse emerged of what was the start of a love affair between Macron and Brigitte.
Emmanuel and his wife kiss to celebrate after the first round of the French presidential elections in Paris on 23 Apr 2017
The duo greet residents while walking along a beach in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, France, on 23 April 2022
Macron, the son of two respected local doctors, was adored by staff for his hard work and intelligence.
The duo would work on the playscript late into the night. Neither had far to go home – the teacher to a house she shared nearby with her banker husband and children, while the pupil walked the short distance to his parents’ home in an affluent part of Amiens.
It was only when the play was finally staged, in front of proud parents and family, that a glimpse emerged of what was the start of a love affair between Macron and Brigitte.
‘Every Friday I went to write a play with her for several hours,’ the president of France later revealed. ‘We spoke about everything. And I discovered we had always known one another.’
Brigitte Macron and her husband French President Emmanuel Macron during the inauguration of the International French Language Centre at the Chateau de Villers Cotterets in Villers-Cotterets, France, on 30 October 2023
As for Brigitte, whose eldest daughter Laurence was in the same class as Macron, she was captivated by his ‘exceptional intelligence’. She felt he was so gifted that it was as though ‘I was working with Mozart’.
The first sign other pupils had that the relationship was more than academic came during the play’s closing party at a local restaurant, with one contemporary watching as the pair shared what he described, cryptically, as a ‘tender moment’.
Their romance blossomed and caused a scandal in the province. Macron’s parents then sent him to Paris to attend another school, but his desire to be with his teacher and pursuit of her remained.
In an interview with Paris Match magazine, the 70-year-old said that she told herself once Macron was in Paris, he would ‘fall in love with someone his [own] age’, but that didn’t happen.
The First Lady continued to explain that she delayed marrying her husband for 10 years for the sake of her three children.
Brigitte finally wed Macron – a civil servant in his late twenties at the time – in Le Touquet on 20 October 2007.
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