The Queen, who died on September 8 at the age of 96, had an emotional bond with France, where she made many official and private trips.
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Elizabeth II loved France? Of course, we can seek the answer in her “Small Talks”, these clichés of which she was a great professional. In Paris, in 1957, before President René Coty, she magnifies “the deep and lasting affection (…) between our two peoples, fortified by two great wars (…) from which they came out victorious”. At the Elysée, in 2004, she ensured before Jacques Chirac that she was not tired of the elegance and charm of Paris “.
Ten years later, during her fifth state visit to France, she talks about “the pleasure” that she experienced in 1948 to “discover this beautiful country” chosen then for her very first trip abroad . Alongside François Hollande, she still highlights her “great affection for the French people”, while evoking “this unique mix of friendship and rivalry” uniting the two countries. In 1972, she had outdone herself noting in front of Georges Pompidou, who had just lifted the Gaullian veto to the admission of the United Kingdom to the common market: “We do not drive on the same side of the road, but we go in The same direction. “
distant French ancestry
But the emotional bond of the queen with France, largely put forward by Buckingham to flatter the hexagonal pride and maintain the real respect of which it was the object in the Republic, was probably not only an invention to diplomatic aim. familiarity d’Elizabeth II with the French language was patent. The princess will leave “the memory of a pure voice, a barely perceptible accent – the” r “,” a ” -, happy falls and a spiritual heat” in a language “which is not His “, enthuses Le Monde in 1948. The future queen then conquered the Paris of the post-war period. The Republic invites it to Versailles, in Fontainebleau, but also in a cabaret close to the Champs-Elysées where she listens Piaf to sing life in pink.
of distant French descendance -his ancestor Alexandre Desmier, from a Protestant family Poitevine, was baptized in La Rochelle in 1608 -, Elizabeth had learned French in her childhood with her housekeeper the viscount Marie -Antoinette de Bellaigue . At 13, she had delivered her first speech in French on the occasion of the visit to London of President Albert Lebrun in 1939. It is said that she spoke French with her sister Margaret when she wanted not to be understood, Dam of Prince Philip.
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