The president of the RN Jordan Bardella stages his romantic relationship for the first time in “Paris Match”, a communication on his private life which is reminiscent of that of the Macron couple in 2016 and resembles a symbolic launch of a presidential campaign. On the front page of the weekly celebrity this Thursday, “Jordan Bardella and Maria Carolina de Bourbon des Deux-Siciles, the romance that no one expected”.
The confirmation of a rumor born at the end of January when the thirty-year-old was briefly filmed alongside the Duchess of Palermo and Calabria, 22 years old, descendant of an extremely wealthy Italian aristocratic lineage. This appearance immediately made the front page of the transalpine press and some French media.
One year before the presidential election
Paris Match says it “surprised them in Corsica” at the beginning of April. But the elaborate photos taken on a beach, in a bucolic setting, accompanied by a laudatory story about “this incredibly atypical couple” between “a politician from the people” and “a princess from the highest nobility” leave little doubt about the staging.
One year before the presidential election, where Jordan Bardella will be a candidate if Marine Le Pen is declared ineligible, “this is the start of a story which will be sustained over time, it will spin, you will have other coverage on vacations, dinners in town…”, deciphers Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, professor of communications at Sciences Po.
“It’s an additional step in building his image after the tour de France to promote his book.” Revealing oneself on the front page of the weekly for an aspirant to the Élysée is not a new phenomenon: Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande have notably complied with the exercise.
A poster campaign on newsstands
Just like Emmanuel Macron. “This made it possible to address the rumors about his homosexuality, the age difference with his wife and to show that the candidate was not just a beautiful disembodied spirit,” summarizes Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet. And to also benefit from a poster campaign in newsstands while political posters are prohibited. The goal is the same for Jordan Bardella: to have “a story that humanizes him and reassures him about his ability to get involved.”
Having it on the front page of Paris Match, owned by the LVMH group, which reaches a wide audience with 400,000 copies sold on average per issue in 2025 (paper and web), is not trivial either.
“A new stage in the trivialization of the far right”
“This is a new stage in the trivialization of the extreme right,” left-wing MP Alexis Corbière lamented on X, denouncing “peopopulism”. A few days ago, another famous weekly, the magazine “Elle”, had made its front page on a presidential candidate. The boss of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier had announced that she was three months pregnant, “a miracle baby” after a miscarriage and an unsuccessful PMA course.
Unlike the celebrity aspect of the Bardella couple, her difficult pregnancy is also intended to be a political message in which a large number of women can identify.
“The terrain of emotion”
“This humanizes him and allows him to communicate on something other than his usual speech,” notes Mr. Moreau-Chevrolet. “A presidential campaign cannot be won without revealing one’s private life, without going into the realm of emotion.” He takes Lionel Jospin as an example, refusing in 2002 to participate in Michel Drucker’s “Vivement Dimanche” program, while Jacques Chirac, already in “Paris-Match”, opened the doors of his intimacy in photos with his grandson. From this point of view, Jordan Bardella has taken a lead over potential competitors, such as Edouard Philippe who is reluctant to talk about himself.
But there remains the question mark of the impact of being in a relationship with a person from the “gotha” for the representative of an “anti-system” party. “Will his voters buy into the fairy tale of the descendant of Italian immigrants who dates a princess? Or will they say ‘he’s betraying us to join the jet set’? We don’t know,” summarizes Mr. Moreau-Chevrolet.
