She lost the Socialist Party presidential primary in 2011, and failed in an attempt to win a seat in the National Assembly in the June 2012 parliamentary elections.

After secondary school in the small town of Melle, Deux-Sèvres, Marie-Ségolène attended a local university where she graduated 2nd in her class with a degree in economics.

Her eldest sister then suggested she prepare the entrance exam to the elite Institut d'études politiques de Paris popularly called Sciences Po, which she attended on scholarship.

[citation needed] In 1972, at the age of 19, Royal sued her father because he refused to divorce her mother and pay alimony and child support to finance the children's education.

After graduating in 1980, she elected to serve as a judge (conseiller) of an administrative court before she was noticed by President François Mitterrand's special adviser Jacques Attali and recruited to his staff in 1982.

Her status as a presidential candidate became more likely on 28 September 2006, when Lionel Jospin, the Socialist former Prime Minister and a fixture in French politics for nearly three decades, announced that he would not run after all.

She also won in 101 of 104 of the Socialist Party's fédérations, losing only Haute-Corse, Mayotte and Seine-Maritime (the latter being the home region of Laurent Fabius).

One of her top advisors, Éric Besson, resigned soon afterwards over a disagreement about the costs of this programme, which he believes could reach €35 billion, while others in the campaign team wanted to delay bringing out that figure.

][9] This led to an unusually bitter fall-out, and Mr Besson writing a book titled Qui connaît Madame Royal ?

After the deadly attacks against a satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket in January 2015, she travelled to Israel to represent France at the memorial services.

Royal stated as part of her 100-point platform that if elected, she would raise the lowest state pensions by five per cent, increase the monthly minimum wage to €1,500, raise benefits of handicapped citizens, implement state-paid rental deposits for the poorest citizens, and guarantee a job or job training to every student within six months of graduation.

[28] She was appointed to the vice-chair directorship of the Banque Publique d'Investissement, from which position she stated that the "BPI's purpose is not to do business nor to make profits".

When a bootleg video of the speech surfaced on the Internet in November 2006, the teachers' union SNES rebuffed her, requesting that she renounce her proposal.

[32] In 1989, Royal wrote The Channel-Surfing Kids Are Fed-Up,[33] a book in which she criticised Japanese animation (then dominant in certain TV programs) as poor quality production detrimental for children.

[35] She has been active in campaigns providing for "Parental time-off provisions and financial support for child illness care",[35] Special education support (parents d'enfants handicapés), "Benefit allocations for students starting the new school year" (Allocation de rentrée scolaire), and the "Prostitution of Minors Act" (Loi contre la prostitution des mineurs) which provides penal measures for clients.

[36] In 2009, she declared herself to be "profoundly shocked" by statements of Pope Benedict XVI which claimed that the distribution of condoms will not stop the spread of AIDS.

"[37] When she accepted her nomination as the Socialist presidential candidate, Royal said: "There is a strong correlation between the status of a woman and the state of justice or injustice in a country."

She also described the M6 programme Loft Story, imitating the internationally popular Big Brother TV series, as contrary to principles of human dignity and risking transforming viewers into voyeurs instead of providing quality programming.

[39] A law passed in February 2002, introduced by Royal on behalf of the Jospin government, allows some parental authority to be granted to same-sex partners.

Article 377–1, added by the law, ensures that "delegation may provide, for the needs of education of a child, that the father and mother, or one of them, shall share all or part of the exercise of parental authority with the third person delegatee".

[41] According to her 2007 campaign website, Royal has advocated a policy of more humane prisons and supports creating better conditions inside penal institutions.

She initially took a very hard line in a televised debate, contending that any nuclear power programme in Iran must be prevented since it would inevitably lead to weapons production.

Meeting Hezbollah politician Ali Ammar, she took exception to his use of the euphemism "Zionist entity", but did not take issue with his comparison of the Palestinian territories to France under German occupation during World War II.

However, the French ambassador to Lebanon, Bernard Emié, backed her explanation that she did not hear "the offending remarks" – the discussion took place via an interpreter supplied by the Lebanese parliament.

[45] In the same visit, Royal thanked the minister for being so "frank" when he described US foreign policy in the Middle East as "unlimited American insanity".

[46] Royal visited China in January 2007; after speaking with a lawyer in that country she noted to the press that he had pointed out to her that the Chinese legal system was "faster" than the French one.

She was immediately reminded by her opponents at home that the Chinese system orders 10,000 executions each year, and that defence lawyers there must be authorised by the Communist Party.

[47] She however brought up with her hosts the fate of three Chinese journalists recently imprisoned, and criticised the "meekness" of French entrepreneurs in tackling new markets such as China.

This comment was widely interpreted as indicating that Royal did not understand that the Taliban no longer formed the Afghan government and that she was clueless on international matters.

[65] Royal's eldest son, Thomas Hollande, served as an adviser to her during her presidential candidacy, working on a website designed to appeal to young voters.