Kim Kardashian glided into the Palais de Justice like a tiny, dazzling empress from a far-off land, which pretty much sums up her global position.
With her hair pinned up and dressed in a black Balenciaga dress, plus plenty of plunge and cleavage up top – because why not? – she was very Barbie Goes To Court meets Superhot Justice Vigilante.
Her mother Kris Jenner was in attendance and the two reality TV stars made their regal procession through the famous court complex in the heart of Paris.
This is the place where, just over 230 years ago, Marie Antoinette received her death sentence. Revolution was in the air back then. Today we were in for a different type of reckoning from a different kind of queen, although the end goal was much the same – heads must roll.
‘It wasn’t just jewellery,’ Ms Kardashian, 44, complained to the jury at one point. ‘Someone took away my memories.’
Ms Kardashian entered the courtroom just after lunchtime through an ornate wooden door marked ‘Temoins’ – witnesses – and took her place at the stand.
In person, her perfect skin boasts the same kind of glaze as an iced doughnut and she is startlingly doll-like; a tiny presence but one that still radiates the affluent sheen of the high-maintenance, high-net-worth woman who is regularly poached in serums and buffed to perfection by an exhausted glam squad.
She also wore over £1million worth of diamonds, which was either a glittering riposte to the men who robbed her, or business as usual for this most opulent of billionaires.
‘Hello,’ she said to Judge David De Pas, perhaps not meaning to sound quite so flirty and breathy, like a friendly waitress putting coasters down on the table, hoping for a nice tip on the order.
A titter ran through the Press benches as she thanked the court for giving her the opportunity to ‘speak my truth’ and blathered on about how much she once loved walking around Paris,
window shopping and ‘drinking hot chocolate’.
What? Did Madame have une madeleine, too? That is what nobody wanted to know.
Yet we didn’t have to wait long for the big tears and the major drama to begin. Five minutes in and Ms Kardashian began to cry when recounting a desperate conversation with the men who robbed her nearly ten years ago.
‘I told them, “I have babies! You can take everything, I just want to get home to my babies”,’ she said. ‘He pulled me towards him and I said a prayer,’ she recalled, detailing when she most feared for her life. ‘I was certain that was the moment he was going to rape me. I absolutely did think I was going to die.’
Ms Kardashian waved her hands around when emotional and her manicure was particularly mesmerising; long talons painted white.
In quieter moments, when not making a point, she clasped her hands together demurely and looked straight at the judge. You can’t say she didn’t give good witness, although her valley girl accent – complete with throaty vocal fry and whiny rising inflection at the end of each sentence – is a torture for the acoustically sensitive.
Imagine pointy white nails being dragging down a blackboard and you are halfway there. ‘I do appreciate the letter for sure,’ she said, about an apology one of the accused has sent her, ‘but it doesn’t change the emotion or the trow-mah.’
What else happened, the court wanted to know? Ms Kardashian said that, on the night, one of the robbers pointed to her finger and shouted: ‘Ring, ring!’, and it was clear he wasn’t asking her to sing an Abba song.
She demonstrated this moment by pointing to her own finger again. This was coincidentally sporting yet another chunk of utterly solid, delicious diamond – which all goes to prove something, but God knows what.
Ms Kardashian has returned to Paris to give evidence at a trial known here as ‘the Proces De La Rue Tronchet’, the name of the street where the robbery took place. She had been attending Fashion Week in 2016 when she was robbed at gunpoint, bound with zip ties, gagged with duct tape, thrown in the bath of her luxurious hotel and relieved of £7.5million of jewellery.
A terrifying ordeal, but I know exactly what you are thinking: Who travels with that amount of bling packed in their luggage?
Yet some might argue Ms Kardashian’s suitcase is a special case. After all, she is one of the richest women in the world, someone who is not in the least embarrassed by her gold toilets and private cashmere-lined jet. Different rules apply.
Nine men and one woman are standing trial for planning and executing the robbery, while the French Press have dubbed them the ‘Grandpa Robbers’ on account of their age.
Most are now in their sixties and seventies, while one suspect has already died and another has been excused because he has advanced dementia.
‘I thought they were younger,’ Ms Kardashian volunteered in court, which was very kind of her given the circumstances.
The accused were ranged around her, a dowdy hotchpotch of bald heads, stubble and scruffy jumpers, all of which were in sharp contrast to the shocking voltage of her glamour. At one point in the afternoon ‘Old Omar’ (real name Aomar Ait Khedache), 68, the criminal accused of being the ringleader, shuffled past her in his anorak, clutching a carrier bag. She didn’t give him a second glance.
Just behind her in a purple sweatshirt sat Didier Dubreucq, 69, one of the men accused of robbing her at gunpoint. He apologised to Ms Kardashian following an invitation by the judge.
Then there was Yunice Abbas, 72, who has even written a book about his involvement in the robbery, unambiguously entitled: I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. I suspect his lawyers rather wish he had not, but it’s too late now.
At the side of the court sat Omar’s 79-year-old mistress Christiane ‘Cathy’ Glotin, a career criminal who is also said to be involved and is my favourite gang member. She looks like Mademoiselle Marple and has a list of previous convictions as long as Ms Kardashian’s limousine. If Glotin is not played by Helen Mirren in the inevitable Hollywood film, then there is no justice in the world.
Speaking of which, given that Ms Kardashian has said nearly all of her testimony in previous Press interviews, it was difficult to understand the purpose of her appearance here today, except perhaps to explain her suffering in greater detail.
Yet she also accepted the apologies and regrets of the accused because, she said, she had realised when having therapy that they had suffered too. ‘I wanted to be a part of this because I am a victim in this case,’ she said. ‘This is my closure.’
All around Ms Kardashian in the courtroom, drab in the shadows of her diamond-encrusted wattage, the glum Grandpa Robbers seemed to understand that a long period of closure might very well feature in their not-too-distant futures, too.
The case continues.