Ambitious heiress with a stormy temperament, the youngest of the three daughters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front since renamed National Rally, had already reached in 2017 - like her father 15 years earlier - the second round of the presidential election.

After a failed debate, the 53-year-old opponent, now a deputy for Pas-de-Calais (north), had regained hope after the victory of the RN in the Europeans in 2019.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen during the debate between the two rounds of the presidential election, May 3, 2017 STRINGER AFP / Archives

But a semi-failure in the municipal elections of 2020 and the sharp decline of her party in the regional elections in 2021 had raised doubts, even if she was dubbed candidate for 2022 at her congress in July.

Eric Zemmour's radical candidacy in the fall made her tremble but also made her appear, by contrast, as refocused, while she "smoothed" her image, dropping all aggressiveness, favoring the power of purchase, which puts his proposals, however unchanged, against immigration and Islamism in the background.

Like his sister Yann, his destiny was first inscribed in the bosom of the "devil of the Republic".

"Whatever happens, you are my father," she told Jean-Marie Le Pen after a violent falling out in 2005.

Ascent

A lawyer by training, Marine Le Pen wore the colors of the National Front for the first time in the legislative elections in 1993. With the support of her father, she took over the presidency of the party in early 2011, gradually dismissing the old barons.

Twice divorced, mother of three children, separated from one of the figures of the movement, Louis Aliot, Marine Le Pen then insists on the economy, poor relation of the speech of the RN: strong dose of protectionism and exit from the euro, before to give it up after the 2017 presidential election, to seduce the "losers" of globalization.

RN presidential candidate Marine Le Pen at a meeting in Perpignan on April 7, 2022 LIONEL BONAVENTURE AFP

Winning themes: in all the intermediate elections before 2017, the RN progresses.

She "demonizes" the party of its anti-Semitic and racist image, until excluding in August 2015 her father, whose remarks she tolerated for years, for some convicted in court.

"I adored this man," she says.

"I fought a lot for him but at some point it had to stop."

Her relationship with her father has since calmed down until she gets his support for 2022.

Marine Le Pen then engages in "normalization": she renounces leaving the euro, changes the name of the party to "gather" and above all smooths her image, all smiles surrounded by her cats.

But these reversals earned her the accusation of "trivializing" the party.

RN President Marine Le Pen at a meeting in Stiring-Wendel (Moselle), April 1, 2022 Jean-Christophe VERHAEGEN AFP

The French "no longer believe in werewolves," she says.

"Quiet France"

In recent years, she has blurred the lines, proclaiming herself "best shield" of French Jews, paying homage to Charles de Gaulle whom the far right hated, displaying the Republic and secularism as a banner against "Islamist fundamentalism" but judging Islam "compatible with the Republic".

She now defends "quiet France" against the president of "chaos", and calls on right and left to join her in "a government of national unity".

Yet it has not given up fighting immigration by proposing to include in the Constitution "national priority" and the rule of French law on international law and Islam by banning the veil.

Eric Zemmour refuels at a gas station on March 12, 2022 in Castelsarrasin (Tarn-et-Garonne) Valentine CHAPUIS AFP

Faced with Eric Zemmour and the war in Ukraine, which generated a rise in prices, she focused on purchasing power, promising to return between 150 to 200 euros per month to each household.

She remains prosecuted by political and judicial affairs, charged with "embezzlement of public funds" in an investigation into fictitious RN jobs in the European Parliament, and relatives were convicted of fraud during campaigns in 2012.

© 2022 AFP