Marie-Ségolène Royal (pronounced: [seɡɔlɛn ʁwajal] ( listen); born 22 September 1953), known as Ségolène Royal, is a French politician. She is the president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council, a former member of the National Assembly, a former government minister, and a prominent member of the French Socialist Party. The first woman in France to be nominated by a major party, she was the Socialist candidate in the 2007 French presidential election but lost to Nicolas Sarkozy on 6 May 2007. In 2008, Royal narrowly lost to Martine Aubry in the Socialist Party's election for First Secretary at the Party's twenty-second national congress. On 30 November 2010, Royal announced her intentions to again seek the PS nomination for President in 2012 but she lost the Socialist Party presidential primary in 2011.

Ségolène Royal was born in the military base of Ouakam, Dakar, French West Africa (now Senegal) on 22 September 1953, the daughter of Hélène Dehaye and Jacques Royal, a former artillery officer and aide to the mayor of Chamagne (Vosges).

Nicolas Sarkozy (pronounced [ni.kɔ.la saʁ.kɔ.zi] ( listen), born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa; 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as the 23rd President of the French Republic from 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012.

Before his presidency, he was leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Under Jacques Chirac's presidency he served as Minister of the Interior in Jean-Pierre Raffarin's (UMP) first two governments (from May 2002 to March 2004), then was appointed Minister of Finances in Raffarin's last government (March 2004 to May 2005) and again Minister of the Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government (2005–2007).

Sarkozy was also president of the General council of the Hauts-de-Seine department from 2004 to 2007 and mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of France from 1983 to 2002. He was Minister of the Budget in the government of Édouard Balladur (RPR, predecessor of the UMP) during François Mitterrand's last term.

In foreign affairs, he promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom and closer cooperation with the United States. During his term, he faced the late-2000s financial crisis (followed by the recession and the debt crisis caused by it) and the Arab Spring (especially in Tunisia, Libya, and Syria). He also married Italian-French singer-songwriter Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Guillaume Durand, or William Durand, (c. 1230 – November 1, 1296), also known as Durandus, Duranti or Durantis, from the Italian form of Durandi filius, as he sometimes signed himself, was a French canonist and liturgical writer, and Bishop of Mende.

He was born at Puimisson, near Béziers, of a noble family of Languedoc. He studied law at Bologna, with Bernardus of Parma, and by about 1264 was teaching Canon law with success at Modena. Pope Clement IV, another Frenchman, called him to the pontifical court as a chaplain and auditor of the palace, and in 1274 he accompanied Clement's successor, Pope Gregory X, to the Second Council of Lyons, the constitutions of which he helped draw up. As spiritual and temporal legate of the patrimony of St. Peter, he received in 1278, in the name of the pope, the homage of Bologna and of the other cities of Romagna. Pope Martin IV made him vicar spiritual in 1281, then governor of Romagna and of the March of Ancona (1283). In the midst of the struggles between Guelfs and Ghibellines, Durandus successfully defended the papal territories, both by diplomacy and by arms. Pope Honorius IV retained him in his offices, and although elected bishop of Mende in 1286, he remained in Italy until 1291. In 1295 he refused the archbishopric of Ravenna, offered him by Pope Boniface VIII, but accepted the task of pacifying his former provinces of Romagna and the March of Ancona. In 1296 he withdrew to Rome, where he died. His tomb is in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.