Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A widowed French president named Jacques-Henri Lambertye starts a secret affair with Patricia, Princess of Cardiff, who has split up with her royal spouse and lives in Kensington Palace.

So goes the plot of “La Princesse et le President,” the new novel by 83-year-old Valery Giscard d’Estaing, president of France from 1974 to 1981. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is fully intentional: Giscard has identified the late Diana, Princess of Wales as the book’s main character.

“I invented the events, but not the places or decors,” he told French weekly Le Point.

Giscard said he met Diana in the 1990s at a charity gala hosted by his wife. They saw each other a few more times, and the princess suggested he write a book of love stories involving world leaders. Little did she know she’d be the heroine.

“La Princesse et le President” would have landed on a reject pile were it not for the name on the cover. The amateurish plot and prose fall short of the standards expected of one of the 40 members of the Academie Francaise, the highest authority on the French language.

“I love you! I love you!” are the novel’s opening words. The president is on the phone to the princess, and she is purring so loudly his press attache hears her voice from halfway across the room.

Checking the China

Pages later, Lambertye recalls their first meeting in London, during a summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations. Invited to a Buckingham Palace banquet, he is seated between the sovereign, Queen Victoria II, and Princess Patricia. The table is lit with rows of bronze torches and set with green- rimmed porcelain plates he wants to flip over to see if they’re French.

The princess wears an open-backed gown of white silk; her blue eyes change color with the light. “She is infinitely more beautiful, with her animated face, than in her pictures,” Lambertye says. Rapturous descriptions of her skin, neck and arms follow.

A flirtatious exchange about the G-7 is interrupted by the Queen, who turns her powdered face to Lambertye and, much to his regret, engages him in conversation. Fortunately, the dialogue with Patricia soon resumes. By evening’s end, the princess teasingly cheers: “You should come to London more often -- there are many interesting people to meet!”

Coffee at the Palace

Soon they’re holding hands under the table at a lunch marking the 40th anniversary of the World War II Allied landing in Normandy. At another London meeting, Lambertye sips coffee at Kensington Palace and enjoys a close-up view of the princess’s legs. Patricia ungrammatically utters, in English, “I wish that you love me,” after which they languidly kiss.

The first night of passion finally comes after a hunt at a chateau near Paris. Patricia tells Lambertye that her adulterous husband has left her desperately in need of love. When the president drops by her room to say good night, she invites him in. Lambertye, the narrator, suddenly turns mute: “I will say no more, I will give out no details.”

“La Princesse et le President” is not Giscard’s first stab at fiction; nor, he has said, will it be his last. In “Le Passage,” another gushing male fantasy published in 1994, he depicted a Loire Valley notary left heartbroken by a fetching hitchhiker. Limbs were already a focus.

“Natalie’s legs are very important to me,” it read. “Nothing, nothing alters their beauty, their vigor, and their tempting softness.”

Judging by his first two novels, Giscard would be well- advised to leave fiction to others. This latest attempt has French editorialists warning of a potential blemish on his presidential legacy. The book should be read, if at all, for its sheer amusement value.

“La Princesse et le President” is published by Editions de Fallois/XO Editions (265 pages, 19.90 euros).

(Farah Nayeri writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 3, 2009 19:00 EST