2007. A dark year for Ségolène Royal.
Candidate for the presidential election, the politician bows in the second round against Nicolas Sarkozy.
In the process, she must face a personal tragedy: the breakup of her relationship with the one who has shared her life for almost 30 years, François Hollande.
The latter, then first secretary of the Socialist Party, cheats on her with the journalist Valérie Trierweiler.
This infidelity will lead to a separation of the couple on June 17, 2007, on the evening of the second round of the legislative elections.
Sixteen years later, the former Minister of the Environment continues to bear the brunt of this painful betrayal.
Betrayal that she mentioned this Wednesday, March 8 in the columns of Le
Monde
,
, to be published on March 15.
In video, the political CV of Ségolène Royal
Still sharp pain
“Never again will I accept being treated as I was in 2007”, assures Ségolène Royal to our colleagues.
The one who was dropped at the time by the Socialist Party did not digest either the "blows" and "the thorns" also left by François Hollande.
In the columns of Le
Monde
, the politician assures us that the former President of the Republic had "imposed a situation of bigamy on her" at this time.
This situation ended in a painful separation with the father of her four children, Thomas, Clémence, Julien and Flora.
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Time to heal wounds
In her autobiography
What I can finally tell you
, published in 2018, Ségolène Royal had already confided in this breakup at length.
She said in particular that she had "hoped every day" that this connection would only constitute a "passing error".
“It took me a long time to heal my wounds, to emancipate myself from this burden and to look to another future, she wrote.
This is why I declined the proposal to resume living together.
Ironically, also underlines the former adviser to President François Mitterrand, Valérie Trierweiler will suffer the same fate a few years later.
"She herself was betrayed for a woman ten years younger," noted Ségolène Royal in her book.
The latter also expressed a single regret, that of not having put an end to this situation “from the start of the campaign”.
Sixteen years later, François Hollande, meanwhile, continues this idyll and married last summer with his partner, actress Julie Gayet.