Aelfe of Albion

The History of the Aelfe of Albion
  In the elder days the elves of Albion were the Aelfe—wild faerie folk without queens or crowns. Courts were local and personal: hill, hollow, greenwood, and shore each kept by a lord or lady whose right came from presence, craft, and the strength to hold a feast without fear. Albion’s chalk and stone ran fat with ley power, and that plenty drew eyes. Sidhe reivers crossed from Éire and treated Albion’s magic like cattle to be lifted; Unseelie riders from Alba learned the quick roads over moor and pass, striking and vanishing with storm-speed. Álfar longships tested the headlands for plunder and, sometimes, trade. Along the Cymric marches the Aelfe and the Tylwyth Teg kept a wary rhythm of feud and accord. Raids stung—but the deeper wounds came when outsiders put down roots.
  The first to settle in force were the giants. No one agrees on their pedigree—Gogmagog’s brood from Albion’s own bones, Jötnar out of the north, Fomóire and Fir Bolg kin out of Éire, ogres out of Francia, even Gigantes wandering up from the Mare Internum—but they agreed on one thing: a fractured Albion made easy country. Mounds were seized, causeways gated, white-horse hills shadowed by palisades. Some clans bargained; most took. Under giant hands, the Aelfe learned the cruel lesson that unruled freedom invites those who believe might makes right.
  Goblins followed the giants like ivy on old walls. They came as builders and bailiffs, then as masters—founding keeps over hollow hills, declaring their “civilizing” law, and demanding tolls from the native courts they displaced. The word gobelin first sounded in Francia’s chronicles; in Albion it came to mean more than a creature. It named an order of rule: ledger over hospitality, clause over courtesy, vault over vow. Aelfe who bent the knee found work and safety in the new towns; those who did not learned to vanish between church and barrow.
  Worst of all were the Orcneas. The name, borrowed from old border-songs and graveyard whispers, meant “barrow-men,” and some said they were goblins fattened on war; others swore they were the walking hate of burial mounds given flesh. Whatever their making, the Orcneas were larger, crueler, and more war-drunk than any goblin stock—beasts that wore a human gait. They raised turf-forts on old graves, threshed villages with shield-walls, and kept a faith of iron simplicity: only power matters. Where giants subjugated and goblins administered, the Orcneas scoured.
  These invasions changed the Aelfe. Fragmented courts learned federation; hill-lords learned convoy and counter-raid; oath and muster replaced the old habit of “each rath for itself.” Some houses bent, some broke, and some hardened into a new thing the later ages would call the Faerie Courts. Scholars in our day like to map the eras to mortal history—the giants as Rome, the goblins as Norman kings, the Orcneas as Saxon war-bands; the Sidhe, Sith, and Álfar as borderers and raiders from Éire, Alba, and the north; the Tylwyth Teg as the uneasy neighbor one must always answer. The Aelfe tell it more simply: Albion learned, painfully, that beauty without order invites carrion—and that order without beauty becomes a yoke.
  History of the Aelfe — The Golden Age and the Taking-Back of Albion
  The Aelfe were a fractured people, pressed to heel by one conquest after another. The storm that ended it did not begin in their halls but in mortal ones. Out of Cymru came Nimue, half-faerie sorceress, and later Merlin the cambion—both walkers between Earth and Otherworld—whose counsels and meddling knit paths between realms and set Albion’s chessboard for change.
  Arthur’s brief, bright reign on Earth cast a long shadow in Otherworld. His feats, vows, and the ritual gravity of Camelot’s court tightened the old crossings; the stories themselves became roads. Among the Aelfe, that human courage read like a mirror they could finally step through: a reminder that they were not only the ruled, but a people with their own claim to order and beauty.
  Mortal names took root in Aelfe memory. The Fisher King’s wound and healing became a parable for restoring blighted lands; Morgan le Fey—enemy, ally, and aunt of storms by turns—proved that craft could reshape a fate without breaking it; Nimue’s bindings taught that law must harness power rather than merely punish it. These figures entered Aelfe councils not as masters but as exemplars whose legends carried tools the Aelfe could adapt.
  Foremost among those allies stood the Green Knight. The Aelfe called him by his true style, Bertilak de Hautdesert, child of the Green Man and a pagan British princess. He was oak-strong, yew-supple, a warrior who bled sap and healed like spring. After Arthur passed to Avalon, Bertilak withdrew from the mortal court and turned to the Aelfe, riding the hollow ways to call them up from bickering raths to a single muster.
  Bertilak did not promise safety; he taught honour with teeth. He spoke of courage and measure, of Camelot’s better law, and of the pride that refuses to be managed by occupiers. Under his banner—and under the watchful eyes of Nimue, Merlin, the Fisher King, and Morgan when she chose—the Aelfe made a new thing: a table where rival lords and ladies sat as equals, witnesses named, and quarrels were bound to ends.
  The campaign that followed remade the map. Giants and trolls were driven off the fat lands and penned to crags and marches; stolen causeways and chalk-cut hills returned to their keepers. Raiding bands from Éire, Alba, the north, and the marches met not scattered steadings but Aelfe knights on Avalon’s faerie steeds and messengers who could outrun a storm. Goblin bailiffs were hauled from their keeps and told their ledgers no longer ruled Aelfe lives. As for the Orcneas, their raw brutality broke against chivalry, discipline, and spectacle—the Green Knight’s single combats, the Aelfe’s relentless convoying, the public treaties that shamed raiders into terms. Even in their defeat the Orcneas kept a warrior’s respect for the Green Knight and the Aelfe who stood beside him.
  Albion’s golden age was minted in battle, blood, and sworn word. When the smoke thinned, the Aelfe and their native fey allies were free for the first time in living memory—not because they had found a tyrant of their own, but because they had learned to bind power to measure. In the settlement that followed, Albion divided its rule among peers and raised the Courts of the Four Seasons, each a pole of style and law, so that pageantry and rivalry could play without tearing the land apart.
  An Age of Queens and Kings — the Aelfe take the rule of Albion
  The Courts of the Four Seasons were founded to keep balance among the Aelfe and to blunt the old habit of faction-feud. Each season holds an appointed king/s and queen/s—partners by custom, whether wed, oath-bound, or lovers—who preside during their quarter and then cede the high seat to serve on a joint council. Power turns with the year. No single house can fix itself on the throne; the round of seasons rebalances what ambition gathers. By mortal reckoning this constitution has held since the tenth century, and the Aelfe take proud credit for its endurance.
  Each court draws to itself those who embody its season’s virtues, and as their strength grew they folded Albion’s former overlords—giants, goblins, Orcneas, trolls, and others—into the commons under seasonal law. Old lords became subjects; service, craft, and courtesy replaced conquest as the path to standing. A High Queen, elected from among the seasons, serves as tie-breaker when the council deadlocks and as keeper of the peace between quarters.
  Agreement is rare by design. Subtle maneuver, sharp words, ritual duels, and limited wars between earls and dukes are permitted under the founding codes—named causes, named ends, and strict protections for roads, keening paths, and harvest. The aim is outlet without collapse: quarrels may play, but they may not topple the Four Courts or blunt a united defense when Albion calls. The seasons rule through Aelfe nobility, with other faerie peoples ranked in service and right beneath their banners. The courts, in brief, are:
  Spring — the Court of the Green Knight and the Green Man
  Philosophy: renewal with reckonings. Spring believes power should sprout from courage, craft, and service—not inheritance alone. They favor reforms, amnesties with terms, and “first-blood” duels that end feuds without wasting lives. Mercy is not softness: dead wood is cleared, young ventures are staked and tended, and those who break guest-right find their names replanted as warnings. Their law says every oath must have a season to be revisited and made fit to grow.
  Summer — Titania, Oberon, and the Revel
  Philosophy: abundance made responsible. Summer rules by patronage—art, hospitality, diplomacy—and keeps peace with spectacle: tourneys, masques, and feasts where rivals must praise each other before they draw blades. Beauty is conduct as much as face; generosity proves rank. The heat can scorch: vanity, jealousies, and Puck’s sanctioned mischief all have teeth. Summer’s justice is theatrical but real—public shaming, rescinded favors, and exile from the revel for those who mistake glamour for license.
  Autumn — the Fisher King’s Stewardship
  Philosophy: harvest, audit, and necessary endings. Autumn tallies what was promised against what was done. They prune to save the tree, retire failed ventures with dignity, and levy honour-price where debts rot. Melancholy is a virtue here: they teach that decay feeds next year’s beauty. Autumn courts close loopholes, mend borders, and settle succession cleanly. Their mercy is quiet—a final cup, a fair accounting, a gate closed gently behind what must pass.
  Winter — Queens Mab, Meave, and Mora
  Philosophy: clarity through hardship. Winter is severe but not wicked: cold that preserves, silence that reveals, law that holds when all else fails. They keep the truce-fires, guard old roads, and test boasts against real endurance. In Winter halls, words are few and exact; sanctuary by the hearth is sacred, and debts are either forgiven outright or collected to the last copper. Their kinship with the Sith’s Unseelie is practical—marriages and mutual defense—but Winter insists necessity is not malice: the frost is harsh so that spring means something.
  The Courts don’t have to like each other to last. Rivalries run as hot as friendships, but the structure holds—and as the ley lines hum again, the Aelfe walk our streets as easily as our stories. Albion’s people have scattered across the world; so have their courts and their games. Glamour gives them cover and leverage, and the old rules—hospitality, witnesses, clean terms—translate neatly into contracts, NDAs, and arbitration.
  Winter courtiers wear boardrooms like ice-palaces: crisis CEOs, restructuring savants, discreet enforcers who make hard choices cleanly. Summer thrives in spectacle—film, music, fashion, festivals—patron saints of the arts whose parties do real diplomacy. Spring backs restoration and renewal: green tech, watershed trusts, rewilding projects, start-ups that turn stewardship into policy. Autumn finds profit and poetry in fear-without-harm: horror cinema, immersive theatre, haunted attractions, risk and compliance shops that keep danger inside the lines. Across all of it, their intrigues weave through global culture and markets—sharp, stylish, and (mostly) within the forms that keep the courts from tearing the world or each other apart.
  There’s no mistaking it now: the Aelfe once dismissed as “barbaric” and “fractured” have become a disciplined power. Old rivals like the Aos Sidhe tread their halls with careful respect. To cross the Aelfe is to rouse the seasons—Summer’s hot debts, Autumn’s audit, Winter’s hard sentence, Spring’s relentless return.
  The wise choose to play Aelfe games rather than face Aelfe war. The conquests once inflicted on Albion taught the Aelfe the grammar of rule and the art of taking back; they refined both until they surpassed their teachers. As one giant-lord is said to have muttered: “We made them our servants, and in doing so taught them mastery. Conquest was our lesson—and they learned it better than we.”