Daughter Slams Critics Of New French First Lady 

Paris: The daughter of France's new First Lady Brigitte Trogneux has slammed the critics who have attacked the 24-year age gap between her and husband President-elect Emmanuel Macron.

Tiphaine Auziere(32), on Saturday said "jealousy" was behind the "abhorrent" attacks targeting her 64-year-old mother's relationship with Macron(39) who will be sworn-in as the nation's 25th President on Sunday following his landslide 66 per cent presidential election win against far-Right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen. Auziere, a lawyer by profession said, "I don't want to give credence to people who do this kind of thing." "I find abhorrent in France in the 21st century such attacks, which would not be carried out against a male politician or a male companion of a female politician." "There's a lot of jealousy," she added.

Trogneux and Macron's romance started after they when the President-elect starred in one of her plays at the Jesuit school Lycee La Providence, Amiens, northern France. Macron also shared a class at a Catholic school with one of Trogneux's two daughters Laurence - who is also 39.

The couple also went on to write a play together, which they later admitted was the period when they fell in love. At the time, Macron was just 16. Trogneux a mother-of-three, from a renowned family in the town of Amiens, later left her banker husband Andre-Louis Auziere for Macron. Before the election, Macron broached the abuse targeted at his wife, saying she was the victim of "everyday misogyny". "If I were 20 years older than my wife, nobody would have thought for a single second that I couldn't be an intimate partner," he had told the Le Parisien daily.

Trogneux, now a grandmother of eight, is also expected to play an active role in the new government.