Galette des rois at the Élysée: why Emmanuel Macron will never have the bean

The rare times we saw Emmanuel Macron wearing a crown on his head were during the yellow vest demonstrations. In Paris in particular, outrageous representations of the head of state adorned with monarchical attributes flourished, going so far as to depict the President of the Republic in the guise of Louis XVI - sometimes, the crowned head of the head of state was even suspended from a gallows or guillotine.

Way of saying that in France, even if political historians or jurists sometimes evoke the monarchical dimension of the Fifth Republic, the allusion to the Ancien Régime is rarely a mark of affection towards the head of the State - but most often a political criticism pinning down an exercise of power deemed authoritarian. The Republic and the Revolution are linked: “one is the daughter, the other is the mother” declaimed Victor Hugo in 1851 before the Legislative Assembly. The aristocrats with the lantern, and as for the presidents, it is better that they remain bareheaded if they do not want to take their turn.

However, this Friday, January 5, by virtue of a medieval tradition imported late to the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron will receive representatives of the country's bakers and pastry chefs for the Epiphany galette ceremony. Associated with the celebration of the wise men who visited the child Jesus in the manger, the custom which randomly designates a king among the guests who have eaten a slice of cake is inspired by a pagan festival in Rome, the Saturnalia, during which the king for a day was drawn by lot.

But the Bourbons gave this distant rite a more pious meaning: Duke Louis II, reports his biographer, designated each year on Epiphany a little king from among the young children, who was dressed in the coronation costume then invited to dine at his table. A gesture of humility that the Catholic monarchy perpetuated: at the court of Louis XIV too, kings were fired. However, the tradition of offering, to ladies who had found the bean, the favor of asking the king for a wish, was abolished by Louis XIV: we must not exaggerate either, the king remained him.

Also read: The cake of corporate kings and the fear of getting the bean

The storming of the Bastille arrives: in the revolutionary whirlwind, a fierce hatred of the slightest insignia of the hated monarchy falls on the country. We even renamed the communes: Grau-du-Roi became Grau-le-Peletier, Bourg-le-Roi in Sarthe became Bourg-la-Loi... Obviously, the “day of kings” was not going to remain so a long time. The Paris Commune issued a decree on December 31, 1791: it would henceforth be “sans-culottes day.” Under the Convention, Pierre-Louis Manuel even tried to have the pancake banned. The revolutionaries, greedy, found a solution: in 1794, a decree transformed Epiphany into a “Good Neighbor Day” and on that day, the French now shared... an “Equality cake”. Who cares about the crown as long as you have the frangipane.

In these conditions, we understand the whole dilemma that arises in the service of the protocol of the Élysée, when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing decides to reestablish the tradition of the galette. Emmanuel Macron will certainly have little chance of coming across the part containing the bean: Jean-Yves Boullier, the manager of the Moulin de la Croix Nivert bakery who has been responsible for making the Élysée galette for three years, has delivered a flaky, frangipane-filled pastry, over a meter in diameter!

But what if he still found the bean? Would we see the President of the Republic wearing a crown, in front of the photo lenses of all the journalists? In reality, no, no risk: the pastry chef simply didn't add any beans. Moreover, the Élysée does not speak of “galette des rois”, but only of “galette”.

Also read: “The king is no longer there”, laments Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron regularly makes fun of it: evoking last year a “republican superstition”, he recalled that “there is no king at the Élysée”. What he almost seemed to regret, moreover, in 2015, when he declared in an interview with 1 Hebdo: “There is someone absent in the democratic process and in its functioning. In French politics, this absentee is the figure of the King, whose death I fundamentally think the French people did not want. The Terror has created an emotional, imaginary, collective void: the King is no longer there!”

None of the ministers present this afternoon for the ceremony at the Élysée (Olivier Dussopt, Marc Fesneau, Carole Grandjean) will therefore be able to count on the bean to hope to ascend the throne... of Matignon.