Hideous suit, rictus grin, silver strands… has former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy come to this?

The analogy between Bruni and the ill-fated queen first appeared in an article by Point de Vue in October 2009. Both women, it argued, are famed for their love of fashion and image-manipulation, comparing Maries portraitist Louise lisabeth Vige Le Brun with Carlas Annie Leibovitz. They both issued from inherited wealth, relished music and performance, and boasted faddish dietary tastes Madame Sarkozys regime making her more Let them eat quinoa than cake. Both were also the subject of sexual speculation and fantasy.

Like her forebear, Carlas narrative was rich in detail at once epic and banal. And so we had her muzak that boasted of 30 lovers, her insistence on Sarkos unpatriotic eschewing of cheese and wine, and the revelation that she had engaged a fitness guru for her stroppy spouse, who focused on the presidential perineum.

The latter revelation invited a scrutiny way beyond mere navel-gazing, as Sarkozy shed two trouser sizes, allegedly based on control of this oft-neglected region. His trainer remarked: The perineum is the floor of our body and if its not kept in shape, it is as if you had a house with no floor. You can become incontinent, your organs descend and you have bad posture. Intriguingly, she added: Problems of premature ejaculation are often due to the perineum.

Carla was the author of all such mythography. Such a heroine was a match not only for our fantasies, but for Sarko himself: the dwarfish, testosterone-crazed tyrant, who although globally satirised existed somewhere beyond parody. With his nepotistic endeavours for his son Prince Jean, droit de seigneur-ial selection of wives while officiating at their nuptials (as he did with his second wife, Cecilia), lashing out at scum, aka off-message members of the public, and fanciful self-insertions into events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sarkozy was everything we Brits wanted in a French premier and more.

And now they are gone.

Valerie Trierweiler, partner of the newly minted President Franois Hollande, shows some promise. There is the sexual intrigue of the Sgolne Royal/Hollande/Trierweiler love triangle. The new first lady put her partner on a diet in a bid to shed his nickname of Flanby a tremulous dessert. Chanels Karl Lagerfeld has declared her very handsome, very elegant, and on Tuesday 'the Rottweiler, as she has been dubbed, flashed a shapely thigh. However, sadly for us Carla devotees, Trierweiler is altogether too intelligent, principled and too busy to provide us Brits much by way of comic respite.

And what of the ci-devant Queen Carla? Will she stand by her man? Is there really another Sarko scion, or was it merely a vote-winning bundle of blankets? Is this au revoir or just ave atque vale?

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Hideous suit, rictus grin, silver strands... has former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy come to this?