Shaming of Brigitte Macron exposed in new biography

Brigitte Macron went from pillar of respectability to social outcast after her affair with a teenage Emmanuel was exposed.

Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron. Picture: AP.

In the 1990s, Brigitte Macron was a pillar of provincial French respectability. She came from a well-heeled family, was married to a wealthy banker and taught at a private Catholic school.

When she started dating Emmanuel Macron, who was then a teenage pupil and is now president of France, locals were so shocked that some denounced the relationship in anonymous letters to her parents while others spat on their door, according to a new biography. Both families were scandalised.

The book, Brigitte Macron, l’Affranchie (Brigitte Macron, the Unfettered Woman), has been published as her husband flies to Britain today on his first visit since becoming president in May. The unauthorised biography by Maelle Brun describes the opposition the couple faced in the social circles they frequented. She was 38 and her future husband was 14 and in the same class as her daughter at La Providence Lycee in Amiens when they met.

An acquaintance of Mrs Macron is quoted by Brun as saying: “She is very reserved about this subject. It is a wound about which she doesn’t talk 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.”

Mrs Macron has said that they did not fall in love before he was 15 — the age of consent in France. At the time, she was married to Andre-Louis Auziere, a banker with whom she had three children. She came from a well-known local family, the Trogneux, who had a flourishing cake and chocolate-making business. “Anonymous letters were sent to them — as they were to La Providence Lycee. A friend of theirs even mentions the ‘spitting on the door’ to which they were subjected,” according to the biography. “Tensions were running extremely high. The Trogneux family was scandalised,” the book says.

It says that Mr Macron’s parents, who are both doctors, were also treated “like they had the plague” in Amiens. Mr Macron was taken from the school and sent to Paris to continue his education. Mr Auziere left his wife as soon as he discovered the affair, but they only divorced in 2006. Mr and Mrs Macron married a year later.

The book says that Mrs Macron played a key role during his political rise, somewhere between spin doctor and eminence grise. When he was economy minister between 2014 and 2016, for instance, some members of his staff were jealous of her power and influence, the biography says. “We had to send our notes to her at the same time as we sent them to him,” one is quoted as saying.

The Times