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She was not a typical first lady, she has been the favorite of the French and the one who has had the highest political profile. The most strategic and influential. She is the only one of all the women in the Elysée to have held elected office. Bernadette Chirac was not only the wife of Jacques Chirac (president between 1997 and 2007), but also his advisor.

His story, "a novelistic epic full of dramas", has just hit cinemas in France. It is Catherine Deneuve who characterizes the former first lady, who has sometimes been described as cold or authoritarian. A woman perhaps not very charismatic, but with a strong personality that led her to marry Chirac against the opinion of her parents at a time (it was the 60s) when women did not usually discuss the family mandate. The couple has been compared to the Clintons, because of the relationship of influence they exerted over the presidents and the character they imbued. In May 1998, Bernadette Chirac and Hilary Clinton visited Corrèze, where the Frenchwoman was elected councillor. She proudly showed him her seat: "This is my place." At the end of the event, the American thanked "what Mrs. Chirac has done, her leadership."

Catherine Deneuve in her role as Bernadette ChiracGTRES

It was she whohelped Chirac forge his career to the Elysée. Even when they studied together at Sciences Po College, she would pass him the notes. She once lent him the summaries of a political essay and he, to thank her, invited her for coffee. Soon after, "Jacques Chirac became intimate with a woman whom he still treated as you, he who always tweeted with ease," says Erwan L'Éléouet in his book Bernadette Chirac, the Secrets of a Conquest.

Her maiden name was Bernadette Chodron de Courcel. He belonged to a bourgeois, Catholic family. He received a very strict upbringing and had a hectic childhood and adolescence. His father was taken prisoner by the Germans in World War II and remained imprisoned until liberation. After the fall of France to the Nazis, she and her mother fled Paris.

Bernadette Chirac with Carla Bruni in 2015GTRES

She studied at a Catholic school for girls and entered the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Sciences Po), where she met Chirac. She was discreet. He's charismatic and more open. They married in 1953, much to the opposition of her family. They had two children and later adopted a Vietnamese girl. When he was prime minister but already aspired to the Elysée, he had an affair with a journalist from Le Figaro. The marriage was on the verge of breaking up, but two of his advisers persuaded him not to separate, since the French were not going to elect a divorcee president.

There were several moments in Chirac's presidential term when Bernadette's intervention was key. In 1997, when the president decided to dissolve the Assembly, he tried to dissuade him by considering it a strategic mistake. Chirac, who ignored him, lost his majority, which was left in the hands of the socialist Lionel Jospin.

Bernadette and Jaques Chirac with King Juan Carlos and Queen SofiaGTRES

The second was in 2002, when the first lady warned of the threat posed by far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. He managed to make it to the second round of the presidential elections, leaving out candidate Jospin. Chirac, who appreciated his wife's political nose, acknowledged it in public to his advisers. She greatly influenced her husband in the decision to support Nicolas Sarkozy, who arrived at the Elysée in 2007. There were old quarrels between Chirac and Sarkozy, but she believed it was important to keep him as an ally to "strengthen the political family".

Bernadette Chirac is the only first lady in France to have served in elected office. When he started in 1971, he wasn't really excited. He did so in order to have "political legitimacy." In 1979 she was electedGeneral Councillor of the canton of Corrèze. She was the first woman to be part of this departmental assembly and since then she has been elected again and again. He was in office for almost 30 years.

She was also very active in the associative milieu. She was president of the Hôpitaux de Paris Foundation, which raises funds to improve hospitalization conditions for children and adolescents. She was very aware of this because the eldest of her children was ill. He died in 2016. Jacques Chirac did so three years later. "I hope to leave sooner, otherwise I don't know how I could survive him," he said 20 years earlier in an interview. Today, L'Éléouet recounts, Bernadette "leads a quiet life full of memories."

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