Consuelo de Saint Exupéry
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Consuelo de Saint Exupéry (born Armenia, El Salvador, April 10, 1901—died Grasse, France, May 28, 1979) was a Salvadoran-French writer and artist, and wife of the famous writer and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
Born Consuelo Suncín Sandoval Zeceña in a small town in El Salvador to a family of wealthy landowners, she studied abroad in San Francisco, in Mexico City, and in France. While in France, she met and later married Enrique Gómez Carrillo, a Guatemalan diplomat and journalist. Following his death in 1927, she took up residence in Buenos Aires.
In 1931, she met and married Saint Exupéry and moved back to France with him. Their marriage was a turbulent one, as he was constantly away on flying missions and adventures and had numerous extramarital affairs.
Following the disappearance of her husband in 1944, with the pain of her loss still fresh in her heart, she wrote a memoir of their life together called The Tale of the Rose, which she sealed them away in a trunk in her home. Two decades after her death in 1979, the manuscript finally came to light when José Martinez-Fructuoso, who was her heir and worked for her for many years, and his wife, Martine, discovered it in the trunk. Alan Vircondelet, author of a biography of Antoine de Saint Exupéry, edited it, improving her French and dividing it into chapters. Its publication in France in 2000, a full century after Antoine de Saint Exupéry's birth on June 29, 1900, became a national sensation. It has been translated into sixteen languages.
She is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Her relationship with her husband was portrayed by Bruno Ganz and Miranda Richardson in the movie Saint-Ex: The Story Teller.
[edit] Reference in The Little Prince
Despite their tumultuous union, Antoine kept Consuelo close to his heart. She is a major character in The Little Prince as his "flower", the "rose" on his planet that he protects under a glass cover. His infidelity and doubts about his marriage are symbolised by the field of flowers he encounters during his visit to Earth. It is the fox character that tells him that his rose is unique and special, because she is the one that he loves.
