All right, off the bat forgive my ignorance on the matter, as my education comprises a few hours reading this morning...
The War of the Three Henry's. We have:
-Henry III of the Valois Dynasty ('moderate' Catholic)
-Henry Guise (Ultra-Catholic)
-Henry of Navarre (Bourbon and Protestant)
If I understand things correctly, Henry Valois had Henry Guise killed, and in turn the Ultra-Catholics send in Mr. Assassin Monk who whacked Henry Valois. In the resulting chaos, Henry Navarre took the throne for the Bourbons, converted to Catholicism, and we have OTL.
So, my question is: if we could have one (or both) of the two Catholic Henry's survive (likely Henry Valois, given the near ASB conditions of his murder), what's the possibility of the Catholics and the Protestants fighting to a standstill: resulting in a divided state rather than the single France we all know and love today?
Short term, obviously: long term, one side may have taken over the other, but by this point they were both so exhausted...
Given the survival of one of the Catholic Henry's, how likely is it for France to both end up, and stay divided for the foreseeable future?