Divided France

Inspired by a comment in this thread I was wondering.

What is the best POD to Divide France in a North and South, roughly following the Oil/Oc linguistic borders?

Is the best way to go back to Kingdom of Aquitaine, and make it survive as a independent entry one way or another?
 
From the top of my memory, I'd say early Middle Ages gives you some options, but, in my opinion, the most interesting, as you suggested yourself, is the survival of Aquitaine as an independent state before 769 C.E., when the Franks annexed it and reorganized it into the proto-Carolingian administration.

The country under Odo the Great seemed to be doing fine. A couple decades after his death, the entire country was vassalized by the Franks. I guess this is an interesting PoD: keeping the House of Gascogne in power, resisting the advance of the Franks.

At the time, the cultural divide north and south of the Loire was very stark: the powerbase of the Franks was always the north, and as late as the 10th century the Aquitanians still recalled the Gallo-Roman legacy as a means of distinguishing themselves of the "northern barbarians".

As for later periods, my knowledge is sparse, but I remember:

- Southwestern France under the Plantagenets/Angevins (by the Third Crusade) has a noticeable cultural and liguistic divide in relation to northern France (although the English aristocracy that ruled it spoke Langue d'Oïl French). They were only de jure under suzerainty of the French monarchs, but, despite being fiefs belonging to Henry II of England, it seems Eleanor of Aquitaine and her son Richard (before becoming King of England) ruled it as an independent realm. Thus, perhaps you can imagine a PoD where any of Eleanor's sons rises to become an independent ruler of the Aquitanian fiefs possessions, without assuming the English throne itself, which would consist only of the British Isles and Normandy, all the while resisting Phillip II's campaigns to restore the central power.

- Even later, but earlier than the Hundred Years War, there is the Albigensian Crusade. Despite the religious context, the political aftermath greatly benefited the French royalty, which managed to submit the southern aristocracy in the County of Toulouse, so far de facto independent. Historically, until this era, the Counts of Toulouse were much more affiliated, by cultural, linguistic and political ties, to Catalonia and Provence, which are traditional Langue d'Oc regions. After that, Toulouse was formally integrated in the French monarchy, and lost its de facto political independence.
 
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