Emmanuel Macron: Brigitte’s daughter addresses her mum and French president’s controversial relationship

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, neé Trogneux, were a “vision of love,” Brigitte’s daughter described them together. Speaking publicly for the first time about the couple’s relationship, Tiphaine Auzière has revealed what she thought of her mother’s love affair with a then-15-year-old Macron.

Tiphaine, 34, was just 9 years old when her mum and future stepdad met. Her older sister, Laurence, was in the same class as Emmanuel at the Lycee La Providence. According to the Times, which quotes a TV documentary about Brigitte, Laurence came home from school and told her family that there was a “crazy boy in our class who knows everything about everything.”

Brigitte became Emmanuel’s literature and theatre class teacher at Lycee la Providence school when he was 15 and she was 39. It wasn’t until he was 16 when he declared his love for his teacher, who was 24 years his senior. His parents met with Brigitte to ask her to stop seeing him at least until he was 18. Brigitte apparently replied, “I can’t promise you anything.”

“They were quite smitten and it was quite obvious between them and very difficult,” Tiphaine said.

Emmanuel’s parents had to send him to school in Paris as an attempt to separate the couple. However, he reunited with Brigitte after he graduated.

When Brigitte’s then-husband, banker André-Louis Auzière, learnt that she was having an affair with their daughter’s classmate, he left to live in Lille. Their divorce was finalised in 2006. The ex-couple handled their divorce as seamlessly as possible so their children “suffered as little as possible.”

Tiphaine, who is the youngest of the three children, said her mother and Emmanuel’s love story wasn’t easy, but they were happy.

“If I have to give a vision of love, it’s Emmanuel and Mummy,” Tiphaine said. “When they are together, it is almost as if the world doesn’t exist.”

According to the TV documentary “Brigitte Macron, a French Novel,” which aired in France on Wednesday, Brigitte suffered a lot from following her heart. She was criticised in the city of Amiens, where her family is well known.

“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,” she was quoted in the documentary as saying. Mrs Macron did not appear in the program but allegedly gave her consent to air it.

Brigitte and her ex-husband have three children together: Sebastien Auziere, who was born in 1977; Laurence Auziere-Jourdan, who was born in 1977, the same year as Emmanuel; and Tiphaine, who was born in 1984. Emmanuel married his drama teacher in 2007.

Brigitte’s suffering did not end after she married the younger man, though. Their huge age gap, with her being the older woman, meant that there would be people who were opposed to their union.

The former schoolteacher was instrumental in Emmanuel’s presidential campaign. She had been by his side all the time. When he won the election, there had been an online petition “against a status of first lady for Brigitte Macron,” which attracted 300,000 signatures.

In response, the French government said Brigitte would not take on the official “first lady” title or be given her own budget. Instead, a “transparency charter” was published to disclose the resources that were being used for Brigitte’s public role.