Does Fillon win without Penelopegate?
Presumably. I mean, Penelopegate is what enabled Macron's win-inducing substitution of Fillon as the liberal democrat's alternative to Le Pen in the first round. Its absence presumably produces a Fillon vs. Le Pen runoff, which Fillon wins because the only way that you ever would've possibly seen a Le Pen presidency in 2017 is if President Hollande had somehow ran for re-election, won the PS primaries, & gotten into the 2nd round, which is just an lol because if Hollande had actually decided to run, he wouldn't have done much, if any better than Hamon did IRL's first round, & maybe worse.
What happens next?/How does he differ from Macron?
French presidential immunity prevents sitting Presidents from being tried on charges of committing any crime for the duration of their term, so he'd be immune from his corruption trial (which SoLs may render moot by '27?) for 5 years, & maybe even 10 if he - like Macron, as the incumbent, IRL - remains the liberal democrat's alternative to Le Pen in 2022. Domestically, his election means that LR isn't PS-levels of dead in time for the '22 legislative as IRL, but he'd certainly have a tainting black cloud of corruption hovering over his head for the duration of his tenure in office that, for better or worse, Macron hasn't, which could've potentially deprived him of domestic political capital that Macron hasn't been deprived of. As for foreign relations, I'm not sure much would change; Idk what his personality is like, but if it's crap, then maybe he personally gets along worse with Merkel/Scholz, Juncker/von der Leyen, Putin, etc. than Macron has IRL, but otherwise?
