If you were paying really close attention, you may have noticed two items crossed off the list above that hadn't been posted anywhere yet. I figured the Summer and Winter Palaces were begging to have Elven descriptions, but then why are they different from the Ljosalfar and Svartalfar Palaces? Here's what I came up with: (Spoilered for length, though at least they're a lot shorter than the really long stories I've posted....)
Summer Palace Wrote:When the Compact of the Courts first was made among the elves, there was but a single palace, and the Queens of Summer and of Winter lived together there with their courts, taking their places of rule or of waiting in their due seasons. As time went by however and the nation of the elves grew wide and strong, the Queens and their courts grew apart in their visions of what their roles should be. So at last one year as spring approached, the Winter Queen Faeryl Viconia approached Arendel Phaedra who would soon be Summer Queen once more, and said, "It is a shame to see your beautiful summer court shivering here in our winter palace when the jungles of the south have such warm and pleasant weather. It were well to build another palace for you there, that when the chill of winter approaches, you might retire to a home better suited to your time of rule.
To this generous suggestion, Arendel willingly agreed, though she regretted being so far from her beloved Winter Queen and all the Courtesans of Winter whom she loved, in their time of power - but she consoled herself, knowing that the people of her court would be well pleased, that the people of the south would rejoice at seeing her Court so near even in the dormancy of its power - and that in the joyous warmth of summer they all should always be together once more.
So the Summer Palace of the elves was made in the land where it was ever summer, and so Faeryl Viconia arranged to be present with her Court and servants in the elven seat of power all year round, where she could build her network of schemes, spies, and assassins without interruption, and for half the year - and the half in which she held the greatest power - she could work without the slightest fear of interference or interruption from the Summer Queen.
Winter Palace Wrote:In a certain year in the Age of Magic, when the elven people had spread far across the north, Faeryl Viconia decided that she had little left to gain by spending all her strength within the great palace of the elves in Evermore. Her agents and assassins were in place around the city, her influence was as strong as she could reasonably expect it to be for a Queen who ruled but six months in every year, and the cloying cheerfulness of the Summer Court each year was beginning to wear upon her. So she approached the Summer Queen Arendel Phaedra, and said to her, "It is a pleasure to share my summers with your bright and beautiful court, but the palace grows crowded, and it seems unfit to me that the Winter Queen should disport herself in summer play at a time when in the north of our empire there is snow and cold little milder than what we call winter here. It would be wiser, in the summer months, for me to bring a part of my court to a palace built for the purpose in the far north, that I might see up close how the people of those harsh climes live, and bring the knowledge with me to the aid of the rest of our people when winter comes for a while to all our empire."
Arendel was deeply reluctant to agree, for she dearly loved the company of Faeryl and her court, but Faeryl returned to the subject again and again, reminding Arendel of how it would gladden the people of the north and help her best perform her winter duties, and though she could do so only in sorrow, the Summer Queen saw the wisdom in Faeryl's words. So at last, after many exhortations, she agreed, and the Winter Palace of the elves was built in the land where it was ever winter, and when it was finished at last, Faeryl Viconia and her Winter Court made it their summer residence, and she assisted the Summer Court by ruling those northern lands where the weather was always as cold as the season of her rule, almost as though in that place she were Queen still and had not performed the Rites of Spring - and when the time came to perform the Rites of Autumn, she left her hardiest lieutenants to maintain and strengthen her influence there in preparation for her return come spring - but the most deadly of her servants and secret attendants came never near the Winter Palace, for they had other secret duties to perform for her at the heart of the empire's power throughout the year.