Marine Le Pen, aged 27, has managed to steer France’s far-right National Front (FN) from the marginal fringes to the mainstream. Her photogenic traditionalist niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen, aged 25, has joined her in establishing the party as a major player in France’s political landscape with the FN ahead in at least six of 13 regions in mainland France.

Both women face an uphill battle despite having managed to break the grip of Socialists and conservatives. Victory in the second round on December 13 would open the way for a presidential bid for Marine Le Pen in 2017.

Both women are the daughter and grand-daughter of the FN’s founder – Jean-Marie Le Pen. Though Marine had never been groomed to take over the helm, she managed to grip the party’s reins in 2011 despite the fact that it had been her older sister, Marie-Caroline, that had been groomed to take this role.

Not only did she take the leadership from the hands of her sister, but she managed to give FN a complete make-over from its stereotypical xenophobic image, even though this meant a rebellion within her family. Her father, aged 87, is unhappy that the party he created is now taking a different line.

When the founder of the party took his revenge with a strong of anti-Semitic comments, he was quite simply thrown out and the father and daughter have not spoken since.

The November 13 attacks in Paris took the attention away from the family squabble and onto the party line. Le Pen said that there was “no choice but to win the war” against the attackers from the Islamic State Group. “If we fail, Islamist totalitarianism will take power in our country,” she said.

On her part, the anti-gay, anti-abortion niece of Marine Le Pen, a young mother, has taken a strong stand on a number of issues. She raised a storm last week in Toulon, where she spoke in an area with large numbers of citizens of Arab descent, stating that muslims can be considered French if they fullow the customs and a lifestyle shaped by Greek and Roman influence and 16 centuries of Christianit. “We are not a land of Islam. In our country, we don’t wear djellaba clothing, we don’t weir a veil and we don’t impose cathedral-sized mosques,” she said.