Yuck.
Posted on 09/22/2009 8:22:35 PM PDT by Saije
"I wish that you love me," says Patricia, Princess of Cardiff, whose mangled English is one of the few notable differences between her character and the real-life Diana, Princess of Wales. Her would-be lover is French President Jacques-Henri Lambertye — drawn, it seems, to closely resemble real-life former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing...The florid romantic tale, titled The Princess and the President, might have passed largely unnoticed...were it not for the fact that its author is former President Giscard himself...some newspapers have covered the book as though it might be a thinly disguised kiss-and-tell.
"Fiction or reality?" Le Figaro asked in a headline alongside a November 1994 photo of a tuxedo-clad Giscard being gazed upon by a glowing Diana during a charity event...
But could such an affair have actually happened? Certainly not in the way the book describes, because Giscard had been voted out of office and into semiretirement by 1981 — the same year Diana's royal marriage launched her rise to international stardom...
Many pundits are alleging that the timing — and questionable taste — of Giscard's book is driven by the fact that...Jacques Chirac will publish a memoir of his own political career next month. Enduring hatred between the two men stretches back to the mid-1970s...
"Giscard wants to divert attention from Chirac's book and doesn't care how low he has to stoop or ridiculous he looks doing it," says commentator and humor writer Bruno Gaccio...
However, Gaccio suggests French machismo may also be at work. "People always speak of...Mitterrand and Chirac as great ladies' men, and...Sarkozy went out and married a top model, but who refers to Giscard as a seducer?" Gaccio asks. "No one — so he's decided to do so himself, with a story whose leading lady is no longer around to debunk it."
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Yuck.
The tabloids ablaze is the real cause of all those auto fires in Paris’ suburbs. ;’)
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Giscard is a very elegant, cultivated gentleman. In France, he was well known throughout his career as being quite the skirt chaser, although never on the scale of Jacques (one night stand) Chirac. I beiieve his wife, Anne Aymone, who comes from a real aristocratic French family, is some kind of cousin with Diana.
Diana was attractive and looked great in clothes, but had soap suds for brains. She was known for her terrible taste in men, ranging from Palace lackeys to other very young handsome dolts.
The idea that she would have a love affair, or whatever with a man so much older, smarter, and very intellectual is a bit far fetched.
But it is just fiction, n’est ce pas?
Giscard himself is of the minor nobility, although I can’t remember if he is Capetian/Bourbon in his lineage.
Merovingian? And thereby a descendant of Christ, according to Dan Brown.
Giscard is not from a noble family. Giscard d’Estaing in NOT his family’s true name. His pretentions of aristocratic origins made him the laughing stock of the real nobility, and the average bourgeouisie as well. His father or grandfather purchased the particule (d’) when he purchased the estate of a noble family.
Sounds like the so-called “nobility” in Poland. For the last 200 years of the kingdom, titles were sold left and right to raise money for the crown. There are very few Polish aristocrats by blood, as the Jagiello (who were Lithuanian anyway) had a problem reproducing.
Avec plaisir de amore..
It would not surprise me very much, the French older Gentlemen can be quite charming and disarming when they choose to be, and let’s face it, Diana lacked what could be called..discretion.
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