“France is no longer a big country”

The word ofAnne-Aymone Giscard d’Estaing is rare. The former first lady still doesn’t like being in first place. And yet, it was indeed his for seven years. Exposed to a light that she did not seek, Anne-Aymone strived throughout this period to embody French charm and elegance, with rare distinction. In the tradition of Yvonne de Gaulle and Claude Pompidou, she represented a certain idea of ​​France and the way to serve it. Modern, she had an office set up at the Élysée to be able to work and prepare for her trips to the provinces to meet the French. She paved the way for those who came after her.

His rule of conduct seems to have been inspired by the famous “Never explain, never complain”, dear to Elizabeth II. “She is not afraid of anything, and she has great strength of soul…” said of his wife, in 2015, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to Frédéric Mitterrand, during a television interview. The life of one who loves nothing more than cultivating roses on her property in Authon, in Loir-et-Cher, has not lacked thorns, the first of which made her bleed to the very heart of his childhood. The disappearance of her father, who died during deportation in 1944, a victim of typhus, at the Melk-Mauthausen camp, will mark her throughout her life. Struck again in old age, when she lost her daughter Jacinte in 2018. “She can face the greatest challenges, without giving a sign of failure,” wrote about her VGE in Power and Life.

Coming from the marriage of François de Brantes and Aymone de Faucigny-Lucinge, herself a descendant of the Duke of Berry – son of King Charles representational role. Privilege of an aristocratic education, never showing that you are bored, while you yawn deep within yourself… A social origin that will sometimes be mocked by her husband’s adversaries, describing the presidential couple as “haughty and distant”… “Mom is the complete opposite, reacts Louis Giscard d’Estaing, his youngest son. She was always very simple and worked hard to make our lives as normal as possible, one of the reasons why we never lived at the Élysée. » Also, when Anne-Aymone Giscard d’Estaing receives us in her Parisian apartment in the Montparnasse district, it is a breath of distinction that fills the space. This quiet grace and this sincere kindness, which she embodied for seven years, are almost amplified in this 91-year-old woman, considerate, strong and intelligent, on whom time does not seem to have a hold. A woman in whom a world ends…

LE FIGARO MAGAZINE. – Where were you, madam, on May 19, 1974, at 8 p.m. ?

Anne-Aymone GISCARD D’ESTAING. – At home, rue Bénouville, in front of the television, where I learned, like all French people, of the election of my husband to the presidency of the Republic. We had voted in the morning in Auvergne, at the town hall of Chanonat, and we returned after lunch to Paris.