'Les elephants' find it doesn't pay to underestimate Segolene Royal

Segolene Royal is more than a beige twinset. Picture / Reuters

Like a Picasso painting that seems outwardly simple but over time reveals its subtleties, the character of Segolene Royal is undergoing a shift in appreciation by the French public.

For months, the woman bidding to be France's first woman president has been seen as vanilla - a smooth dresser in the Chanel twinset style, a fair enough orator but nothing really special, better on style than on substance.

But with the presidential election campaign building up speed, the media are digging behind the image.

The mosaic that emerges is of a woman of strengths and contradictions, who has turbulent or unresolved relationships with men and battles to balance her family life with her career. It is an image with which many French women identify.

"She's the archetype of the feminine ideal of today," says Serge Hefez, a psychiatrist. "She brings together the qualities of woman, mother and warrior at the same time."

Socialist Party members cast their vote on November 16 for their candidate to contest France's next presidential elections, a two-round affair set to unfold next April and May.

Today, the pollsters predict Royal will romp home against former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the party's two leviathans

It is easy to understand now why Royal should have been underestimated.

She had never sat at the top table of government reserved for security, diplomacy or economy. She had had brief spells as Environment Minister, Junior Education Minister and Junior Minister for the Family, although she is also current President of the Poitou-Charentes, a mainly rural region in western France. She had never courted party barons or done deals in smoke-filled rooms at party congresses. And until now, she had always remained quietly and dutifully in the shadow of her partner, Socialist Party head Francois Hollande.

For many Socialist members brought up on a diet of debate and doctrine, Royal is vacuous.

Her speeches hint at nothing exciting or even substantial in the realm of ideas, although within the context of French politics, remarks she has made about immigration, violence in council estates, labour laws and military service have been construed as a right-wing shift.

But the opinion of Socialist traditionalists probably matters less than that of a huge influx of new adherents to the party who have been lured by a cut-price membership deal.

Royal's pitch to these key new voters has been to turn her disadvantages to her advantages. A fan of Hillary Clinton, she uses her femininity as a coded message for freshness and change. And she attacks unpopular positions and policies that her party rivals have been forced to defend.

The Royal bandwagon has been given an eerily-timed boost by a prime-time TV drama about the first French woman president and a chirpy song that is spreading on the internet. Even Bernadette Chirac, wife of President Jacques Chirac, thinks she can win: "She has a look."

Philippe Alexandre, author of a forthcoming book on Royal, says she is dogged and driven, "like Joan of Arc, haunted by her mission".

But Royal will have to raise her game in her final bout if she meets Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.