Adorable Story #135: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
The President Who Wanted France to Be Cool
“Le pouvoir ne se partage pas ; il s’abandonne.”
“Power cannot be shared; it is relinquished.”
— Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
This week we meet Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a WWII hero turned technocrat, a modernizer with aristocratic manners, and a man convinced that progress could still taste like good wine. His story travels from wartime trenches to the gilded halls of Paris, from economic battles to European dreams — and it all began with a sharp mind and an accordion.
Table of Contents: From a Family of Civil Servants to the Corridors of Power / Building a Political Career in a Post-Gaullist World / The Big Win: President at 48 / Reforms That Changed Everyday Life / The European Idealist / The “Diamond Affair” / The Long Afterlife of a Former President / Personal Life / The Writer President / Later Life / One More Thing: Truffle Soup V.G.E. / Ingredients / Preparation
If you aren’t subscribed yet, hit the subscribe button below to receive the Adorable Stories every weekend, directly in your inbox:
From a Family of Civil Servants to the Corridors of Power
Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d’Estaing was born on February 2nd, 1926, in Koblenz, Germany.
His surname sounds like an aristocratic title — and in part, it was — but his family’s roots were more bureaucratic than royal: his father, Edmond Giscard d’Estaing, was a senior finance inspector, and his mother, Marthe Clémence Jacqueline Marie “May” Bardoux, came from a long line of politicians and administrators.
In fact, despite the addition of “d’Estaing” to the family name by his grandfather, Valery was not a male-line descendant of the extinct aristocratic family of Vice-Admiral d’Estaing.
He had an elder sister, Sylvie, and younger siblings Olivier, Isabelle, and Marie-Laure.
Valery Giscard studied at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, the École Gerson and the Lycées Janson-de-Sailly and Louis-le-Grand in Paris.
During World War II, as a teenager, young Valery joined the French First Army, under the orders of General de Lattre de Tassigny and fought in the final campaigns to liberate France. For his bravery, he received the Croix de Guerre, one of the nation’s military honors.
After the war, he went straight back to school: Valery graduated from the École Polytechnique and then the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), two of the most selective institutions in France, where many French technocrats and presidents are built.
Building a Political Career in a Post-Gaullist World
Giscard entered politics in the 1950s, representing the central region of Puy-de-Dôme in Parliament. He was clever, ambitious, and very comfortable with numbers. By the time he turned 36, he was Minister of Finance, one of the youngest in modern history.
He worked under Charles de Gaulle, the towering war hero who restored French pride. But Valery was a different creature: he liked reason more than rhetoric, conversation and dialogue more than grandstanding.
