Emmanuel Macron’s step-daughter has spoken for the first time about her mother’s scandalous affair with the future President of France.
In an interview that will make uncomfortable reading for both Mr Macron and his first lady, Brigitte Macron, Tiphaine Auzière admits she remains wounded by the ‘forbidden relationship’ between a married teacher and teenage pupil.
Ms Auzière, who has just published her first novel, also used her talk with Paris Match to address claims that Brigitte was born male.
Ms Auzière was just 10 when she found out that her teacher mother was seeing a pupil 25 years younger than her.
Brigitte was still married, so her three young children had to put up with constant speculation about the ‘forbidden relationship’ in Amiens, northern France.
Tiphaine Auzière admits she remains wounded by the Macrons’ ‘forbidden relationship’
French President Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte Macron have been married since 2007
‘I learned a lot about human nature,’ Ms Auzière, now 40, said in the interview published on Thursday.
‘I know that, in these moments, we must focus on the essential and move forward without taking into account criticism.
‘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.
‘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.’
Ms Auzière was particularly upset that her humilated 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.’
Brigitte Macron and her daughter Tiphaine Auziere pictured in June 2017 in northern France
Tiphaine said she always spoke about Mr Auzière in the present tense, even though he died in 2019, aged 68.
Paris Match describes how ‘Tiphaine Auzière was a child when the scandal broke.’
The magazine 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.’
Ms Auzière’s sister, Laurence, was 17 years old at the time, and a classmate of Emmanuel Macron, who is the same age.
Ms Auzière said the rumours of a ‘forbidden relationship’ were horrific for all the children, including her brother, Sébastien, then 19.
All were pupils at La Providence, the Roman Catholic high school in Amiens, where Brigitte was a drama teacher.
Ms Auzière, 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.
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
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
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.
Ms Auzière, a qualified lawyer, now lives in Calais with her husband and two children.
Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron’s paths first crossed at an exclusive high school in northern France.
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
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
Macron, the son of two respected local doctors, was adored by staff for his hard work and intelligence.
At the time, 39-year-old Brigitte was married to banker André-Louis Auzière, with whom she shares three children.
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.’
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, who are around the same age as her younger partner.
Brigitte’s son is three years older than Macron and her daughters, now aged 46 and 39, are of similar age to her second husband.
Brigitte finally wed Macron – a civil servant in his late twenties at the time – in Le Touquet on 20 October 2007, after divorcing her estranged husband André-Louis Auzière the year before.