You statement that you "do not want to use XML parsing" reminds me of the observation that "the lawyer representing himself has a fool for a client."

If you reject the best advice here, you're representing yourself.

There's good reason to avoid using regexen for your task: By and large, the mature XML modules are well tested, reliable, and consistent. They reflect the developer's (or developers') extensive knowledge of XML and the potential "edge-case gotcha's" ...and the community's.

Your regex isn't going to have those advantages.

Afterthought: You'll want to use &lt; and &gt; when you need less-than and greater-than symbols in narrative text... and foreswear the use of </br> (it isn't among the PM-approved markup tags.) Markup in the Monastery may help.