Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), is an unlikely public face for a male-dominated, anti-immigration party that depicts itself as a defender of traditional family values and ordinary people. The 46-year-old is raising two sons with a Sri Lankan-born woman, a filmmaker, and speaks fluent English and Mandarin, having done a doctorate in economics in China. Weidel's unusual profile, however, is precisely what makes her an asset to the AfD, say political analysts, lending a veneer of well-heeled liberal respectability to a party that is suspected by authorities of being antidemocratic.