Merveilleux! The centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has triumphed in the French elections, stopping the tide of far-right populism in which our global elites are flailing and bringing his infant En Marche! party’s brand of “hope” to a public dialogue grown rancid with acrimony, insult and excruciating self-interest.
But, whatever about that. Macron’s triumph should be celebrated, primarily, for the further opportunities it will allow us to ogle his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, the 64-year-old grandmother of seven who first captivated her husband when he was a 15-year-old student in her literature classes at Jesuit school in Amiens and now enters the Elysée Palace as France’s second-oldest first lady. Ooh la la!
It’s almost impossible to determine which titbit of information is most thrilling about the life and times of Mme Macron. That her daughter was a fellow student in her future husband’s class? That the couple fell in love while working together on the school play? That his parents were so devastated by the discovery of their love affair that young Emmanuel was banished to Paris (like a star-crossed Romeo) but still returned home each weekend to pursue his amoureuse? That she comes from a family of chocolatiers (how totally French)? Then, there’s the delicious coincidence that has seen Trogneux made première dame in the same year that the film The Graduate, and its husky-voiced sorceress Mrs Robinson, celebrates its 50th birthday. It’s all too perfect.