When an employment lawyer from the French provinces brings out a debut novel, it might not be expected to attract much attention. But Tiphaine Auzière, 40, is also the stepdaughter of President Macron and her first foray into the literary world has become one of the most talked-about books in France in recent days — shining a spotlight on the unusual dynamics of the country’s first family.
Assises (Assizes), published last week, is a courtroom drama that draws on her early experiences as an advocate working on criminal cases in gritty northern France. One of the book’s dedications stands out: “To Emmanuel, who showed me that nothing is impossible.”
Yet while critics have praised its style and pace, much attention has also been focused on the author’s own story. In a pre-publication interview she told Paris Match magazine about “the attacks, the backbiting, the judgments” that she faced as a ten-year-old when her mother, Brigitte, then a fortysomething teacher at a Jesuit high school in the small town of Amiens, fell for the future president, 24 years her junior, while he was a pupil there.
Sitting in the office of her law firm a ten-minute walk from the Elysée Palace, Auzière, who has the same slim figure and blonde hair as her mother, did not deny that the affair had set their neighbours’ tongues wagging, but insisted this was only part of the story.
“When I was young I heard criticism, remarks about my family and I still hear them about my family today,” she said in her first interview with a British newspaper. “It forged my temperament and gave me strength. But the dogs bark and the caravan moves on.
“In any case, I never stopped to think about what people might say, so it hasn’t changed my life. I’ve learnt to live with it and independently of it.”
Blended families such as hers can also turn out to be an “opportunity” if they are formed with “love, kindness and respect”, she said. Auzière, the youngest of Brigitte Macron’s three children with her first husband, added: “I have a father whom I loved dearly, who unfortunately passed away, and a father-in-law whom I love dearly. In life, there are blood ties and there are other ties that can be just as strong.”
The attacks on the family have nevertheless continued — among them a bizarre claim that circulated for several years on social media that the first lady had been born a man. Speaking out about the issue for the first time on Friday, International Women’s Day, Macron called the assertion “false and fabricated”. The two women responsible for starting the rumour were last year convicted of libel and given small fines.
Auzière herself said she was appalled by the speed with which such conspiracy theories could spread and urged action, on a European level, to tackle the problem. “It’s on the same level as people who say the earth is flat or that we are governed by reptiles,” she said.
The book, which begins in a court in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where Auzière spent her early legal career, centres on a series of female characters whose lives have been turned upside down: a woman facing a long jail sentence for killing her abusive husband, an eight-year-old girl raped by her stepfather and a female doctor stalked by a patient.
“What was important for me in the book was to show how justice works and to make it accessible to everyone,” she said.
The cases are all handled by Diane Delaurel, a married lawyer, whose personal life runs into turbulence when she falls for César Ost, an imperious but sexy prosecutor — not something, Auzière insists, that has happened to her.
She did experience upheaval as a child because of her mother’s relationship with Macron, which broke up her marriage to André-Louis Auzière, a banker. The experience, Auzière said, was “painful” for all concerned. Macron, 46, is less than seven years older than her.
The story of the love affair between the teacher and her pupil, although told many times, remains extraordinary.
Brigitte, now 70, first met the future president when she taught him French and Latin at La Providence grammar school, which her own children also attended. By all accounts, he was a brilliant pupil: Auzière’s sister, Laurence, who was in the same year as Macron, reportedly described him to her mother as “a crazy boy who knows everything about everything”.
The romance with Brigitte appears to have been kindled when, aged 16, Macron began to attend the school drama club, which she ran. As Paris Match reported: “The young Emmanuel often rang the doorbell at the Auzières’ home, and rumours were rife.”
Their father left home when he learnt what was going on, though he and Brigitte did not divorce until 2006, leaving her free to marry Macron the following year.
Brigitte has since revealed misgivings about the relationship, which she said began at a time when she was “caught in an inner hurricane” following the death of her father. “For me, a boy so young, it was prohibitive,” she said in an interview, also with Paris Match, published in November.
She told the magazine it was her unwillingness to “ruin” her children’s lives that caused her to put off marriage for so long. In the meantime she had expected that Macron, bundled off to Paris by his parents, would fall in love with someone his own age. It never happened.
Three decades later, the combined family remains close: Auzière said she and her siblings — she also has an elder brother, Sébastien — are frequent visitors to the Elysée Palace with their partners and seven children between them. “We like to see each other very regularly, we’re an extremely close-knit family,” she said. “Emmanuel considers them his grandchildren. And Emmanuel is their grandfather.”
Although Auzière works in Paris, she and her partner, Antoine Choteau, 44, a gastroenterologist, live with their daughter, Élise, 10, and son Aurèle, 8, a few miles from Le Touquet, a chic seaside resort.
Brigitte Macron owns a villa there that she inherited from her father, where she and the president often spend weekends. Her family, the Trogneux, are well known chocolatiers, who set up shop in Amiens in the late 19th century and have branches across northern France; their speciality is macarons.
The link with Macron, who has been a divisive figure in France during his seven years in power, has coloured Auzière’s life. “There are those who detest you without knowing you, others who adore you without knowing you,” she said. “You learn to live with it.” For that reason, she said she considered using a nom de plume for her novel.
It also means she has taken care to protect her own children, making a point of discussing with them anything hurtful said by classmates. They seem to be coping well. “I think that by now they, too, have learnt to live with it,” she added.
Auzière began the book a couple of years ago without saying anything to her family; when she finished it a year later she showed it to a literary agent she came across through work. The agent passed it to Stock, one of France’s most prestigious publishers, which bought it.
Only then did she pluck up the courage to show the manuscript to Brigitte, a book lover, who had introduced her daughter to authors such as Jane Austen; Pride and Prejudice is Auzière’s favourite.
It was a double test, she said: not only because Brigitte was her mother, but also because she was a “passionate teacher of literature and French”. “She really liked it and gave me the nicest compliment, which was to say: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t detect this talent.’”
By contrast, she waited to show it to Macron until the book was printed. “I wanted him to have the most beautiful version,” she said. On publication day, when we met, she said she was planning to take a copy to the Elysée Palace that evening. The president once said that as a teenager he was convinced that becoming a writer was his “only vocation”.
Although Auzière is keen to emphasise the positives about the past, there were losers, too, most notably her father, whom she describes in the dedications as “my precious star”. He remained an important part of his children’s lives and was present at important family occasions, sometimes — such as in 2009 when she qualified as a lawyer — when Macron was also there.
After the breakup her father kept a low profile: he never gave interviews even after Macron stood for president and the media turned their focus on his personal life. “He made the choice to remain anonymous, as anonymous as possible,” Auzière said. “He didn’t want anything to be said about him, even though there were a lot of journalists who researched and investigated him.”
It was in this spirit the family decided not to announce his death, aged 69, in December 2019. It came to light only nine months later when Auzière revealed it in an interview. “It’s what he would have wanted,” she said.
