The Macrons: A Grim Sort of Fairy Tale

There’s nothing remotely ordinary about the Macron marriage, unless you consider a slow-motion car crash “ordinary.”

A 25-year age gap? Oh, absolutely. A quaint detail in the grand tapestry of French politics, easily overlooked when one considers the deeper, more unsettling threads. The increasingly plausible whisper that both partners are men? A delicious, almost poetic irony, adding layers to an already opaque narrative. And now, as of yesterday, domestic violence? Check. The final, unsettling flourish on a portrait already too dark for polite society.

Cameras, those silent voyeurs of the powerful, caught the French first couple in a disturbingly one-sided physical exchange on Monday. A grim little tableau, unfolding as they waited to disembark their plane in Vietnam. The footage reveals Brigitte, the 72-year-old former schoolteacher, engaging in what can only be described as a strategic dismantling of her husband’s composure. One hand, seemingly with a will of its own, smothered his mouth and part of his nose, while the other applied a quiet, firm pressure to his jaw. A chilling pantomime of control. Following this intimate display, she then, quite deliberately, refused to take his hand as they descended into the waiting world.

Oui. Indeed.