French President’s break-up

Hollande’s ex-wife is former French presidential candidate Segolene Royal

The French President Francois Hollande recently called up the French news agency Agence France Presse to announce that he had ended his nine-year-old relationship with Valérie Trierweiler. He said he was speaking not as the head of state, but in his personal capacity. A day after the announcement, Trierweiler, who works as a journalist for a glossy magazine and supports a charity, kept her India engagement and flew to Mumbai.

The announcement follows weeks of intrigue about the status of their relationship, after Closer magazine reported that Hollande was having an affair with an actress, Julie Gayet. They published photographs of a man, reportedly the president, wearing a helmet and seated on the back of a scooter, allegedly being taken to meet Gayet. Following the revelations, Trierweiler spent a week in hospital for, according to her office, ‘rest and some tests’.

Before his relationship with Trierweiler, Hollande was married to Segolene Royal, a former French presidential candidate, with whom he fathered four children. The twice-divorced Trierweiler has three children of her own. While Trierweiler and Hollande never married, she has assumed the role of First Lady at official functions since his election in 2012.

According to media reports, Hollande did not want Trierweiler to travel to India. Her trip had been planned months in advance and billed as a visit by ‘France’s First Lady’. During a press conference in Mumbai, when asked about her future, she said she had no time to reflect but that she would continue working for the charity Action Against Hunger. She also said, as reported by The Guardian, that this was her third India visit; the first time she had travelled as a journalist, the second time as the First Lady, and this time “call it what you will”.

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