The D’Anjou–Bolduc Families’ Longstanding Feud

The D’Anjou–Bolduc Families’ Longstanding Feud is an inherited political rancor that repeatedly makes marriage, loyalty, and family secrets into grounds for suspicion. Its persistence is clearest when Roger Bolduc disappears after traveling clandestinely to New York: the D’Anjous connect his absence to their missing cameo, and an old family division returns with renewed force.

Origins and Inheritance

By the time Loïc considers contacting Roger, the hostility between the D’Anjou and Bolduc families has endured for almost a century and is described as political in origin. It had already shaped an earlier generation: the marriage of Loïc’s parents had met the same kind of resistance that would later confront Isabelle D’Anjou. Family allegiance is thus not simply a private matter. A marriage can be treated as crossing a boundary between rival lineages, carrying an old quarrel into the next generation.

Roger’s marriage to Isabelle brings that inheritance into sharp focus. Roger is the youngest child of Romuald Bolduc, remembered by the D’Anjous as a grasping entrepreneur and their worst enemy in Touladi. Isabelle, meanwhile, is related to Loïc through her mother’s side. Even before Roger vanishes, their marriage joins branches whose kinship has not displaced the grievance between them.

Isabelle’s Marriage and the Family Divide

Isabelle was the youngest and cherished daughter of Lucille D’Anjou, who supported her without reservation. Her attachment to Romuald’s younger son nevertheless provoked turmoil in the family. To secure her father’s consent, Isabelle had to wage a long campaign; he eventually agreed, but only reluctantly. The alliance was therefore understood within the family as an exception to its inherited loyalties, not as proof that the feud had ended.

After Roger’s disappearance, that tension falls on Isabelle. At the family gathering, the D’Anjous look to her while she keeps her eyes lowered, her face pale and still. Georges D’Anjou says that he has already spoken at length with his daughter and that Roger concealed business dealings from her as well as from the family. Alain D’Anjou, Isabelle’s older brother, responds with contempt for the Bolducs, reviving the hostility that had shadowed her marriage. The suspicion directed at Roger thus risks becoming a judgment on Isabelle, despite the stated limits of what she knew about her husband’s affairs.

The Disappearance Rekindles the Feud

Roger had traveled to New York in secret and disappeared around the September 11 Attacks. The D’Anjous regard the circumstances as deeply suspicious: they wonder whether he took the cameo, what he was doing in New York, and whether he died there. As time passes without evidence that he perished in the attacks, a darker conjecture takes hold among them. They imagine that he sold the family jewel to an anonymous collector and used the disaster as cover to disappear to a tax haven or a distant Pacific island. These are suspicions, not established facts, but they harden the family’s case against him.

Georges tries to manage the public consequences. He arranges a carefully limited account in Le Soleil, stating that Roger was in New York on the day of the attacks, was not on the victims’ list, and had not been proven dead; the family had contacted the police and an investigation was underway. Privately, however, the judgment within the D’Anjou household is already close to settled: Roger is their black sheep, presumed to have vanished with the cameo. Georges sends New York authorities photographs and detailed descriptions of the jewel, along with information about Roger, while also trying to prevent the story from spreading further in the media.

A Feud Renewed Across Kinship Lines

The Bolduc family does not remain outside the dispute. Roger has siblings in Touladi and elsewhere, as well as a wider circle of relatives, and they soon answer the D’Anjous’ suspicions. The conflict consequently expands beyond a son-in-law and his wife into a renewed confrontation between two extended families. It strains Isabelle’s position between her birth family and her husband’s kin, echoing the old divisions that once made her marriage so difficult to secure.

The episode shows how the feud perpetuates itself without resolving its original political cause: inherited resentment supplies the framework through which ambiguous events are interpreted. Roger’s secrecy and disappearance invite suspicion; suspicion is shaped by the family’s memory of Romuald and the history of opposition to Bolduc marriages; and the resulting accusations revive the quarrel in Touladi. Even the effort to suppress publicity cannot restore trust. The cameo’s uncertain whereabouts and Roger’s unknown fate leave the family division open, rather than bringing it to an end.