Brigitte Macron’s daughter has spoken out for the first time about her mother’s love affair with the teenage Emmanuel Macron.
Tiphaine Auziere, 34, appeared in a television documentary last night which cast fresh light on her mother’s relationship with the French president.
She described how the future leader fell for her mother aged just 15, when he attended a theatre workshop she ran at a Catholic secondary school in Amiens.
“They were quite smitten and it was quite obvious between them and very difficult,” said Ms Auziere, who was nine years old at the time, while her mother was 40.
The first lady, now aged 65, gave her blessing for the documentary but declined an interview.
The programme, aired on a French state television channel, explores the moment the eager pupil declared his love for his teacher in 1994, when he was 16.
His parents reportedly asked Mrs Macron to stop seeing him until he was 18, but she replied: “I can’t promise you anything.”
Her husband Andre-Louis Auziere then left after learning about his wife’s affair with their daughter’s classmate, although their protracted divorce was not finalised for over a decade.
Meanwhile, Mr Macron was sent to a finishing school in Paris, but the couple carried on their long-distance relationship for 13 years before he eventually proposed.
Ms Auziere said: “If I have to give a vision of love, it’s Emmanuel and Mummy. When they are together, it is almost as if the world doesn’t exist.”
The documentary quotes Mrs Macron as saying: “I know that I hurt my children and it’s the thing for which I most reproach myself but if I hadn’t made that choice I would have missed out on my life.”
