THE leader of the French Socialist party and father of Ségolène Royal’s children has expressed ambivalence towards her presidential quest by saying that he would have had “greater legitimacy” as a candidate, even if she had more chance of winning.

François Hollande’s remarks were the latest in a series of blows to the Royal campaign, revealing a deep malaise in the Socialist camp just as the party was meant to have buried its differences.

Hollande, 52, suggested he had sacrificed his own presidential ambitions to help his more popular lover. But in an interview with The Sunday Times he sounded far from comfortable with the role of second fiddle.

“I considered she had more chances [of winning], even if I had greater legitimacy as party secretary-general,” he said.

With her unorthodox brand of social conservatism and old- fashioned socialism, Royal, a glamorous mother of four, easily defeated two male rivals last year for the party’s nomination as a candidate to replace President Jacques Chirac.

Her face has since been splashed across the world’s magazine covers. While Hollande, a squat figure with thinning hair, thick spectacles and a loathing of what he calls “political marketing”, has stayed in the shadows, she has progressed from politician to style icon.

Complaining recently about “machismo”, Royal said she was not supported enough by the “elephants”, as the Socialist party elders are known. Some have publicly questioned whether she is up to the job.

But instead of sympathising with her, Hollande said he understood the “reserve” of former Socialist ministers Laurent Fabius and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Royal’s defeated rivals.

“It is not easy to accept not to be a candidate when you think you have all the qualities to be one,” he explained over a cup of tea in the party headquarters at Argentan, Normandy, before a speech in the town hall.

“What is more, Ségolène wanted to campaign with the strength she got from the nomination and it was only afterwards that she called on all those who could constitute her team to join her,” he said. “Now that question is resolved. She is supported by all the leaders of the party.”

Perhaps, but try as he might to sound supportive, Hollande, whose enemies call him “Flanby” after a wobbly caramel pudding, could not help exuding unease at the spectacle of his life’s ambition being usurped by the woman he once considered his political pupil.

They met in the 1970s at the National Administration School, a nursery for politicians. According to sources close to Hollande, the then apolitical Royal used to hang on his every word. She said recently that she had been “seduced” by his “humour, his character, his intelligence”.

As for the decision about who would be the candidate, she said that “a family life is a life of concessions and compromises”. Asked how Hollande was coping with his role, she said: “He’s okay with it. We’ll see what happens next.”

However, according to Hollande’s friends, things are not that comfortable. What makes it all the more painful is Royal’s embrace of a campaigning style that is anathema to him.

Hollande denied having any reservations about her abilities. “If I had thought she could not be a candidate . . . I would have entered the contest myself,” he said.

Through clenched teeth he supported her proposals to make parliament stronger and the presidency more accountable under a “sixth republic”. This was an idea to win back voters from “third man” François Bayrou, who has made institutional reform the heart of his centrist campaign. Polls have shown him snapping at the heels of Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate and former interior minister.

Hollande had previously opposed this type of constitutional reform, however, and Royal’s embrace of it was a slap in the face: it is closely associated with Arnaud Montebourg, a Royal spokesman who has attacked Hollande as the biggest “defect” of her campaign.

There could be worse humiliations: Hollande acknowledged that he was worried about a repeat of 2002, when Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister, lost in the first round of voting to Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Front.

The two leading candidates in the first round of the election on April 22 will go through to a run-off on May 6. Failure to win a place in the run-off twice in a row would spell doom for the Socialist party and its secretary-general. “We must do everything to make sure we get through this time,” he said.

Royal might have seemed the party’s best hope for achieving that but it was not the first time that Hollande had sounded less than supportive. When one of Royal’s aides declared, after she was crowned party candidate, that she was now “the general” leading the campaign, Hollande snapped: “I’m the general.”

And in January he was heard to comment: “Kings always take back power. Queens last only a certain time.”

The curious relationship of this unmarried couple fascinates France. Royal says they almost tied the knot in Polynesia last year but that Hollande feared ridicule.

“It would have been wildly romantic, a marriage in a canoe at the other end of the world,” she said in a book of interviews that appeared last week. She added: “We don’t need this to love each other.”

The partnership is no bed of roses, however. There have been rumours of affairs and suggestions that the Socialist party hierarchy led by Hollande is at war with the Royal entourage.

The impression of discord was intensified earlier this month by the appearance of a vitriolic book by Eric Besson, a former Socialist party economist who resigned in despair at what he called Royal’s “incompetence”.

“I don’t say it because she’s a woman,” said Besson. “I say it because she doesn’t know her stuff. Particularly when it comes to economics.”

He described himself as a friend of Hollande but wrote: “He has an extraordinary confidence that can end up blinding him . . . He’s the sort of bloke who thinks that if his 747 were going down over the Atlantic he would probably be the only survivor.”

Besson said Hollande was being “sidelined”: he does not attend key meetings and when Royal moved into her campaign headquarters, one of his staff was told the phone number was secret.

Although she has asked for their help, the “elephants” were also being cold shouldered. Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister, attended an event with Royal recently in which she did not address a word to him.

Fabius, a former prime minister, keeps calling her office to offer help but gets no reply. Royal is unlikely to forgive him for having asked, upon hearing that she was running for president: “Who’s going to look after the children?”

Even Hollande, or “Monsieur Royal”, as he is sometimes called, did not seem to be counting on winning a ministry if Royal is elected.

Having been rebuked for making policy without consulting her — he announced a few months ago the Socialists would put up taxes if the party won power — he was at pains to emphasise that he would not try to get his hands on the levers if Royal won.

“We can share tasks during the presidential election campaign,” he said. “But not afterwards . . . He who thinks Ségolène Royal could not fully exercise her responsibilities does not know her very well.”

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