The game I play in has those courts being patriarchal, Father - King - Prince
Spring: Oberon is king - rebirth, sexuality (most creatures breed in spring), compassion, growth, life, similar to summer...even more chaotic than summer in general.
Autumn: Das Erlkoenig rules - decay, hunting, invoking weakness, strength, survival of the fittest, death, similar to winter...more orderly than summer but less orderly than winter.
Something about this post flipped a mental switch and got the gears turning different way in my brain. Summer is things like unchecked growth warmth and fire, Winter is cold death sleep (based on
Lea's actions in changes when susan is mistaken as an "intruder" while dresden is out
) air & darkness..
The erlking's dominion is pretty well defined in OW where it says outright that he's a
. His dominion could easily include things like marshaling troops and all the things that go along with preparing for war with a shift like Winter's inclusion of sleep. The erlking seems too honorable for war itself though. He doesn't seem like the type to be too happy about being fully bound by the accords, maybe he found a loophole that allowed him to repurpose war into hunt and autum court into goblins to unshackle them from some portion of the accords they disliked.. but going against their nature caused the goblins to be harmed by light and misshapen
With war opened up that gives a nice spot for spring to fit in... Spring is a time of change, maybe spring could represent change, dishonor, trickery(loki*), the devouring nature oof flame**, war itself, dishonor & dishonorable death*** and time.
I think it goes well since erlking translates to elfking and dresden's
was made by a
which were norse(I think?!, not sure on that spelling though) Maybe they stayed closer to their original nature and avoided the warping goblins suffered.
The structure and rules of the accords would kind of be opposed to the devouring and trickery inherent in this version of fall... maybe they refused to join the accords or tried to underine the process and split their own way into the force that reshapes/relinks never and lower gods like thor & heimdall(s?) were previously part of spring/autum but split at the same time
*Loki was always a bit of an outsider among the norse gods, maybe humans just got a fae confused with gods like odin because the two were frequently at odds, odin seems like the type to try and protect humans from the conflict by not going out of his way to set the record straight and let them think they have more of a chance in standing against a mere fae rather than a god they thought him to be... and Loki might be happy to engage in the trickery by suggesting that he is a god without outright saying it. I can think of a story that meets those qualities while also doing it without actually speaking a lie if a few wordings were chosen carefully
http://library.thinkquest.org/25326/Viking/thor.html read the story... "My name is Skrymir" could easily be truthful if the actual wording were more like "you may b=call me" or something instead of "my name is". The rest could be covered in a similar manner or by having a mortal make introoductions. Plus it and loki's children could qualify as some pretty badassed fae
**summer represents unchecked growth and warmth, they have the heat of flame down pat, but devouring would be antithetical to summer's nature. but it fits well with both the thor/loki-giant story while also fitting in with winter/summer. Summer is unchecked growth and winter is sleep/death, fall/autum is when nature gets itelf into the swing of devouring itself to defend against the death that winter brings so it gets reduced to mere sleep.
*** if erlking was spring, that leave a a gap for the spirits of those who died outside of the hunt/honorable circumstances and loki's daughter Hel's keep was where the those who died without honor went. Trickery is anything but honorable so dishonor fits well there