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Hollande, Trierweiler
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Paris, Oct. 11: Francois Hollande “shared” his partner Valerie Trierweiler with a minister from Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in a Jules et Jim-style relationship, a new biography on France's First Lady claims.
La Frondeuse (The Troublemaker), claims that Trierweiler, 47, had an affair with Patrick Devedjian, 68, a former economic recovery minister, in the early 2000s, but that the Socialist Hollande, 58, muscled in when the Right-winger failed to commit himself further to the relationship.
There followed a period “a bit like Jules et Jim”, said the co-author Christophe Jakubyszyn, a close friend of the First Lady, referring to the 1962 François Truffaut film in which Jeanne Moreau is in a love triangle with two men and all three live in the same house.
“Patrick Devedjian hesitated so much that Valérie Trierweiler allowed herself to be courted by a second man of another political persuasion: François Hollande,” he said.
“Little by little, the relationship with Hollande took precedence over the other, notably after an ultimatum in 2003 which Devedjian failed to respect. But he suffered a lot from the break-up. It was a bit like Jules et Jim. Both men still have a lot of respect for each other,” he said. All three had other partners at the time.
In another extract from La Frondeuse, out today, Trierweiler is cited as claiming she was “chatted up” by Sarkozy “while he was holding his ex-wife Cecila’s hand” at an Elysée garden party in the same period.
“You are so beautiful,” he is said to have whispered to Trierweiler, then a political journalist.
She responded with a “withering look”.
Clearly annoyed at the rebuff, he is said to have told other journalists: “Who does she think she is? Am I not good enough for her?”
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