Segolene Royal has been partner, political rival and now unofficial vice-president to Hollande since they met at France's elite graduate school in the 1970s. "If I lose, it will be the right or the extreme right in power," Hollande said on Europe 1 radio. After Hollande took office in 2012, beating Royal in the primaries, he waited until April 2014 to name her in the government. After studying alongside the President at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, Royal's political star rose faster during the middle phase of their careers after the couple's four children were born. "I still have to achieve something irreversible," she said in an interview at her ministry in central Paris last week.

Source: New Zealand Herald May 17, 2016 15:52 UTC