When Tiphaine Auzière wrote her first novel, Assises, she thought about using a nom de plume. Plenty of friends will have urged her to, surprised this should even be in question. “But I did ask myself the question, and the answer came back a resounding ‘no’.”
Across a boardroom table in her Paris office – situated in a majestic Haussmann-style building 10 minutes from the presidential Élysée Palace – the 40-year-old employment lawyer sits back in her chair, holding my gaze. “Why would I hide behind a pseudonym? What kind of message does that send my children? So, I went with my own name, because I have a family, and you either like it or you don’t. But also, because I worked hard for this, and I refuse to hide behind another name. To have done so would have been cowardly.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Brigitte Macron’s daughter, the youngest of three children from her first marriage to the late French banker, André-Louis Auzière. I assumed she would be cautious, because lawyers are and her stepfather is the French President. I thought it likely she would be actively defensive. Because while her skilfully written novel – a courtroom drama inspired by her early experiences as a lawyer working on criminal cases in northern France – has received great reviews, it has also brought renewed attention to the unusual circumstances surrounding her blended family.
Auzière – a beautiful, wide-eyed blonde with her mother’s slim figure and smile – has faced some pretty unique challenges from the age of 10. First, her mother, Brigitte Macron, became the subject of the small-town rumour mill when the then fortysomething teacher at a Jesuit high school in Amiens fell for a pupil 24 years her junior. Then, when that pupil became president, there was the global rumour mill to contend with.
From everything I’d gleaned about Auzière, however, from the child abuse, rape and murder cases she had to deal with as an on-call lawyer in Boulogne-sur-Mer, to the strongly-worded Tweets she has occasionally put out defending her family, I was certain she wouldn’t be “cowardly”. To underline this, there’s the dedication in Assises: “To Emmanuel, who showed me that nothing is impossible.” It’s a clever way of pricking the balloon right there at the start, but also clearly heartfelt.
“For me, family has always been an anchor – central to who I am,” she says, warm and informal with me from the start, despite the looming presence of a security guard outside. “So, even though the core of my family exploded when my parents divorced, I always stayed close to my dad – whilst having the great fortune to have a stepdad that I love enormously.” Despite the challenges brought by their extraordinary circumstances, Auzière never saw hers as a “broken family”, she says, but a “reconstituted family – a blended family”.
As someone who has dabbled in family law in the past, Auzière “has seen how painful divorce can be,” she tells me, “but when it is done with love and kindness, as was my case, a blended family can be a great thing. For me, it really opened up my mind, particularly because my mum started a relationship with someone younger, which always attracts attention.”
Thirty years ago, Auzière won’t have been as equanimous. She, her cardiologist sister Laurence, 47, and engineer brother Sebastian, 49, were 10, 17 and 19 when they found out about their mother’s love affair. Indeed, it was allegedly Laurence, a classmate of Macron’s, who told her younger sister about it. And when news of the teacher-pupil romance became public knowledge in Amiens, the small city in which they grew up, it was an incredibly difficult time for them all. They faced “attacks”, “backbiting”, and “judgements”, she recently told Paris Match.
“But it did force me to be broadminded and receptive,” she stresses today. “From early on, I refused to listen to the pointless critics, and only let myself listen to people who were objective and constructive in what they were saying. Then, even as I got older and things evolved, when there were new circumstances to contend with like how to navigate my professional life, the presidential election and the death of my father, my family always remained a refuge for me. We’re able to tell each other everything,” she says, adding with a broad smile: “We have no filter.”
Sadly, the same can sometimes be said of those outside the family unit – even strangers. Whilst in a social context she’s always happy to have conversations with people who disagree with Macron’s politics or policies, she says, “if people say to me ‘well, I think he’s a bastard’, then I see that as a personal attack”.
This is understandable. Apart from anything else, she must see him almost as a father? “Well, they are two separate entities in my mind. There’s my father, who I loved deeply and sadly died [in 2019], and then there’s my stepfather who I also love profoundly.” Both have been key figures in her life in different ways. “It was my stepdad who helped prepare me for the oral exam in my law degree – it was him who got me ready. And then there were a whole load of other things I did with my dad.”
She and her stepfather don’t necessarily agree on everything, she tells me. “Oh, we can agree – or not agree! It does happen that we disagree on certain subjects and then we’ll have those discussions without holding back, like every family does. In fact,” she grins, “it’s often over Christmas dinner or family lunches that we’ll argue, but when that happens he’s always listening to what you’re saying, always interesting and passionate on whatever the subject is, so I’m pretty lucky.”
She tells me about “a famous French pop song by a singer called Vianney called Beau-papa [Stepfather]. It’s such a beautiful song, and the words are so true. He says there ‘aren’t just blood ties’, and it’s true that you can have such strong ties with someone who is not related to you.”
Macron may have been a little pushed for time of late, what with the stormy reaction to his government’s controversial pension reforms and his hardened stance on the Russia-Ukraine war, but the French president was still able to find time to discuss Assises with his stepdaughter. One of the key themes is domestic violence, “an issue he’s very sensitive to and conscious of,” says Auzière. “In fact, he was very engaged on the subject both during his presidential campaign and after.”
Although domestic violence figures have risen across Europe since the pandemic, France has seen a sharper incline than most and now has the highest femicide rate in Europe. Why does Auzière think that is? She shakes her head sadly, momentarily at a loss. “I think there are a few reasons. First, we never used to talk about it. Now we do a lot more. And legal changes have made it easier to file a complaint now – you can even do this online.”
Whilst both of these things are good, progress, they will have affected the figures. “But we also need to be more aware of the different forms of violence all around us and find a way to stamp them out,” she says. “Because what starts with verbal violence then moves on to physical violence. So we need to be more vigilant about that. Just look at the violence there is on social media! Even political figures will use violent language now.”
We segue seamlessly onto Trump, whose verbal attacks on different racial, ethnic and religious minorities, on journalists and politicians, could fill a book, and who most recently called illegal immigrants “animals”. “What that does is free up others to speak in a similar way,” maintains Auzière. “They think ‘well, if Trump speaks like that, I can too’. ‘If Bolsonaro says hideous things, I can too.’ I think people are often quite sheltered, in that they think: ‘he was targeting immigrants’, or ‘he was targeting women’, but no. When we start moving backwards on abortion, that’s the first backward movement on human rights.”
Earlier this month, President Macron made France the first country in the world to put the right to abort in its constitution. Auzière joined her stepfather at the ceremony marking this historic amendment, “and it was extremely powerful and moving,” she tells me. “I was happy for all the women in France, for my daughter. I found it so reassuring, because when you see what is happening elsewhere in the world… What really touched me in the president’s speech was when he said that he hoped it would inspire other countries. When you see how things are going backwards in other countries like America, it’s worrying.”
Many Americans feel the same, yet Trump looks set to win again, and then her mother may have to grit her teeth through another round of the US president’s “compliments”, I tell her, referring to the Macrons’ state visit to France in 2017, when Trump was very vocal about the French first lady’s physical attributes, telling her: “You’re in such good shape! Beautiful!”
Auzière’s facial composure is impressive. I suspect she’s using every ounce of willpower not to cringe. “Yes,” she says, drawing out the vowel as she tries to work out how to be diplomatic about this. “I mean, I listen to those kinds of comments from afar, and generally speaking don’t respond to them, particularly because if I do it can be picked up and I wouldn’t like it if that then became ‘a thing’ and had consequences…” Understood.
“The only time I did react,” she goes on, “was when Bolsonaro criticised my mum – her age and her physical appearance – in an extremely virulent way. And then I did respond, because the whole point of political leaders is that they are supposed to be examples to us all. It’s up to them not to speak in violent or misogynistic terms, so when they do? Well, I couldn’t let it pass.”
More recently, Auzière spoke out about the cretinous conspiracy theories surrounding her mother’s gender. Rumours the first lady was born male under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux (in fact, her brother’s name) were published on a far-Right website in 2021 and circulated so widely by conspiracy theorists that Brigitte Macron was eventually forced to take legal action.
When you see how many parallels can be drawn between the French first lady’s ordeal and the one the Princess of Wales has just been forced to go through, it does make you worry about the depths to which society has sunk? “I was so incredibly touched by Kate’s video,” Auzière says in a low voice.
“I found it so moving. There she is, asking people to leave her alone so that she can get on with her medical treatment in peace.” Not a big ask, you’d think? “Not really,” she agrees with a dry laugh. “But it really touched me. I thought she was so brave to do that. Because in the end she was forced to do it; there was so much pressure. This, despite her having so many more important things to think about, yet everything was polluted with fake news, each piece of misinformation worse than the one before.”
Not so easy to rise above rumours when they’re about your marriage, your health and your gender – when conspiracy theorists seem determined to deconstruct your very identity?
“It’s the same kind of thing we went through, and I find those kinds of polemics grotesque, on the same level as being told we are all being governed by lizards. So our response to that – or my mother’s response – was to file a legal complaint, and I trust the law to re-establish the truth there. The law does have to intervene in instances like that. On a national level, it needs to condemn that kind of behaviour, and beyond that, on a European level, we need to think about what kind of legal arsenal people should have at their disposal.”
She rightly points out that these conspiracy theories have several tiers of victims. “Because you have the really clear victims like my mother and the Princess of Wales, and then you have others who have been whipped up and muddled by the misinformation.”
So often the direct victims of these hurtful and damaging rumours are women. Because “women are so easy for people to criticise, over their age, their physical appearance, their relationships, in a way that we see less of with men.” While Auzière can’t explain the psychology behind this, she believes that “in the same way that women are violated in war zones,” and indeed the women in Assises are victimised by the men in their families or entourages, “we are targets for a certain type of person in society. What I am certain of is that this needs to be condemned – and by men even more than women.”
As with all societal ills, this can only be changed “through education,” says Auzière, who divides her time between the Côte d’Opale on the north coast and Paris. She and her gastroenterologist husband, Antoine Choteau, have always tried to talk to their two children – Élise, 10, and Aurèle, 8 – “about the relationships between men and women and how we interact,” she says. “Because we are a new generation of parents and I’ve thought so much about how to explain different forms of violence to them; about how to explain harassment and consent.”
Explaining to her children how exceptional their circumstances are must be equally hard? “We are constantly reminding them of that, particularly because the current situation is basically the only one they’ve ever known. My stepfather became Minister of Economics just after my daughter was born, and then he became president. So they’ve only ever known their ‘daddy’, as they call him, with that level of responsibility and exposure. I’ve explained to him that it’s a job and that at a certain point, it will stop, but that as a family we will all still be here but in a different way. It’s important they understand that.”
Laughing, she tells me how her son “was initially convinced being president was a job like any other, and that he might go on to be president himself. I had to explain that there was only one every five years, that you didn’t naturally go into it – and that actually, it wasn’t the easiest job to do.”
Will a part of her be relieved in 2027, when Macron steps down? She gives a non-committal head wag. “I think I’ve managed to stay pretty anonymous really, and to live happily is to live anonymously. Both my stepfather and my mother have always been very protective of us three, and tried to shelter us from as much as they can.” She pauses. “We’ll all adapt, just as we adapted to him becoming president, and it’ll be a different life, but then I often feel that I’ve had a few lives since I was a little girl, so this will be yet another new one.”
Until then, Auzière intends to keep juggling the writing with the day job. Producers have expressed an interest in making a TV version of Assises, which doesn’t surprise me, given how similar a concept it is to the hit Canal+ TV drama Spiral, and people have been asking whether there might be a follow-up, “although at the moment, I’m actually writing a book about end of life, as it’s a subject that has touched me enormously.”
Our time is up, but before I go I’m curious to know what the most important piece of wisdom her mother passed down to her was: “It’s hard to find one because she was very present and gave me all kinds of great advice, but one key message was: ‘be an independent woman’. By independent she meant ‘free’; that you should be free to make whatever choices you want in life.”
Assises by Tiphaine Auzière is published by Stock, and out now
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