Meet France's new power couple

French president François Hollande and his partner Valérie Trierweiler are now France's first family. So how will they differ from the Sarkozys?

On a stage in a country town square, the accordion band struck up Edith Piaf's bitter-sweet love song, La Vie en Rose. François Hollande, just elected France's first Socialist president in 17 years, attempted a few steps of a waltz with his partner Valérie Trierweiler before she stepped back, perhaps realising they might look a little ridiculous on TV. "Kiss! Kiss!" demanded the crowd gathered in Tulle in Hollande's rural powerbase of Corrèze. It was Trierweiler who had chosen the Piaf song, stock soundtrack of France, and who had asked the mayor to play it.

The music marked the return of the accordion to French politics, not seen since the faux-rustic former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing played it in the 1970s – an important message about Hollande's rural, Mr Normal image. But it also showed the subtle importance of Trierweiler behind the scenes. Moments earlier, the political journalist – who began a relationship with Hollande after years covering the Socialist party for Paris Match magazine – had sat with him as he put the last touches to his victory speech. Hollande might have won the election by styling himself as the Ordinary Guy, a powerful political branding exercise, but it was Trierweiler who appeared to have coined the term, having described him as "the Normal Man" in a profile she wrote in 2004.                         More Read