Bernadette Chirac, widow of former French president Jacques Chirac, died yesterday evening at the age of 93, as announced Saturday to AFP by her daughter Claude Chirac. Madame Chirac, born Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, «passed away peacefully in the evening, surrounded by her family. She had just turned 93» on May 18, her daughter stated. She was the only First Lady to have held a political office in her own name, as a general councilor for the Corrèze department, where she was continuously elected from 1979 to 2015.
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Bernadette was one of France’s most beloved First Ladies. Before representing the former president in the last years of his life, Bernadette Chirac lived for a long time in the shadow of her husband, who held the offices of minister and Prime Minister several times, before becoming President of the Republic from 1995 to 2007.
«By fulfilling Jacques Chirac’s destiny, she fulfilled her own», journalist Erwan L’Eléouet, author of Bernadette Chirac, les secrets d’une conquête (Fayard), stated in 2023 in Le Figaro. But at the same time, she was also a political figure elected in Corrèze and dedicated herself to the hospital, particularly through the Pièces Jaunes (Yellow Coins) campaign. For this work, she was awarded the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 2024.
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She was Jacques Chirac’s wife, but above all, she was a woman of character. Bernadette Chirac loved to quote the biblical saying: «No one knows the day or the hour». She seemed to entrust the thread of her existence to the Creator – Le Monde recalls – However, this surrender to the divine did not exclude her desire to choose the moment of her passing, sometimes wishing to “die first”. The death of Jacques Chirac, on September 26, 2019, almost seven years before her, left her no choice. But this reference to the man with whom she shared her life somehow explains her own fate. The Catholic philosopher Jean Guitton, her friend, – Le Monde further writes – considered her the last queen of France. And it is true that she had the appearance, protected by that slightly haughty air she maintained even when in a bad mood, with a high and prominent forehead, an aquiline nose, and thin lips, which sometimes let the guillotine of her disfavor fall upon the head of some dazzled courtier.
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