The Aureliad

Dear reader,
The Aureliad is a zealous retelling of Valus Aurelius' rise to power in the early sixteenth century. While the account is clearly embellished, the bones of the legend hold grains of truth. Through them we can reconstruct Aurelius' unification of the west in a time period whose historical records subsisted wholly of mythical oral histories. Draw absolute conclusions with caution.

— Xenophon, Head Archivist of Alexandria

What follows is a heavily-annotated version of the Aureliad, with notes from Guardians of Alexandria, mainly Head Archivist Xenophon, throughout.

Invocation

Sing, Muse, of glory and triumph, a tale which brought unity and stability to the lands of Aurelia, of the story for whom the nation is named. Send down the words to give tell of the radiance of the Sun Emperor, from small beginnings to legendary reknown. Tell of his taming of the cruel giants, the humbling of the dark and murderous barbarians of the north, and of the romances which brought the western coast to the Sun.
Begin with the clash between warlords of the giant clans and godlike Valus; the Gigantomachy, which saw the giants cast out of the empire and gates of Helorix raised.

Chapters 1-9, Gigantomachy

When the world was new and elves were young, giants ruled the land. Their kind covered the face of Andali; hill giants ruled the rolling plains of what would become Aurelia and Fulminaria, stone giants held the Red Mountains, and fire giants stoked the fires in the belly of the earth. Storm giants rode the waves, even beyond the Horizon Line, and cloud giants looked down upon the face of Andali from the skies.
Tyrants one and all. The Bedlamite's first attempt at a Mortal Soul, too akin to that of Their own, the giants did not know the hubris of man. Save for the cloud giants, each Kin of the Ordning worked other Mortals under their yolk. It was to this world that Aurelius was born; a sun elf, kissed by the Monarch at Their zenith on the Summer Solstice.

Though this record would suggest Aurelius was born in what would later become the rural Aurelian Steppes, firsthand accounts of elven witnesses suggest he was in fact one of the first eladrin to emigrate from the Feywild, bringing with him a cohort of Summer eladrin who became the sun elves of Helorix.

— Xenophon, Head Archivist of Alexandria

Aurelius was blessed with a precocious mind and a body that held the might of the Rider. Once an awesome and terrible giant king name Bophorous ruled the mountain nestled in the crook of the Monarch's Bay from his fortress at its looming peak. King Bophorous held hatred in his heart for all Mortalkind, seeing them as the Bedlamite's imperfect imitation of what They had created in the giants, and a gift from Them to be subjugated and used as he saw fit. Indeed, every year, at the Fall Equinox, King Bophorous called forth his myrmidons to gather a host of Mortals to bring to a grand feast in his castle, where he and his court of sycophants would force them to eat to bursting before being consumed by the mountain giants themselves.

Giants of Ordning above those of the hills do not eat Mortals.

— Zephyros, Acolyte of Kyrr and cloud giant

Under this fear Aurelius lived for eight and ten years before his parents were taken to the feast. They hid him away with old magics, forcing him to swear he would not come looking for them, lest he be taken in feast as well. But he would not swear it, and they were forced to cast him into the Feywild as the giants approached. For four years, Aurelius journeyed in the Feywild, gathering a host of Summer Eladrin about himself, vowing vengeance on those who had destroyed his home.
And he returned, on the dawn of the Fall Equinox, weilding a sword sung of living metal which hummed through the air as the light danced across its blade. He led his host against that of King Bophorous, drunk off their bacchanalia, and slew them in the streets as they began to gather Mortals for their feasting.
Aurelius himself marched alone up the ten thousand steps to King Bophorous' castle, where the king was seated upon his throne. As he marched, Aurelius shouted challenge to King Bophorous in single combat for the crown, to which Bophorous released a laugh that shook the mountain to its foundation, and gleefully accepted. But, knowing he would be far outmatched in a battle of raw physical strength, Aurelius instead fought with endurance, taking long, ponderous steps up the path to the castle.
King Bophorous, from atop his enormous throne, arogantly cleft colossal portions of his own palace from the stone from which they were hewn and hurled them down to crush Aurelius. But, Aurelius was armed with a blade forged from the magics of the Fey. It blazed with a flame as hot as the Monarch's halo on a summer's day, and melted the very stone upon which he walked. When met with one of King Bophorous' projectiles, he swept the blade before him and cast it aside, harmlessly tossing the structures into the fields around the mountain.
As he hefted his palace over his head, King Bophorous began to fear. For with every piece of castle he threw, his dominion shrank. His very attacks ate away at the mountain and brought him closer to Aurelius, until the very heart of the mountain was exposed. Seizing the moment he had been waiting for, Aurelius rushed forwards, crossing the last steps in two mighty strides, and took hold of the heart. Bophorous, exhausted, was powerless to stop him, and lay prostrate on the ground before Aurelius as he spoke:
"In the ruins of your mountain, I shall raise the gates of my city. Where your people once ruled, our children shall play. Your halls shall be replaced by gardens, your monuments with fountains. Not one soul shall remember your name for any victory, but for your defeat at my hands."
Bophorous could do but utter a whimper as Aurelius drove his flaming sword into the heart of the mountain, shattering it. With its breaking, Bophorous and any giant of the Ordning who called him king were covered over in stone within a serpent's breath. And true to his word, Aurelius placed the gates of Helorix where Bophorous' kingdom once stood.

It goes without saying that there was never a mountain where Helorix now stands; the city is built at the mouth of a river. However, this is an excellent example of mythology used to provide an explanation for the unexplainable. We know now that the subterranean ruins found throughout both empires are the remnants of a Precursor civilization, and the stone statues within them are works of arcane art we cannot even recreate today. But to ancient civilizations without the tools we have at our disposal today to comprehend the secrets of the past, this story offered them a fascinating explanation for the phenomena they were encountering.

— Sasha, Archival Assistant

With the foundation of Helorix, Aurelius issued a proclaimation to the surrounding countryside: "Come to me, tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and take shelter behind my walls."

The remainder of these chapters go on to tell the story of how Aurelius led a revolt against the giants in the Aurelian empire, working with a gold dragon named Eumoras to expel them from the land. In the story, Aurelius travels across the face of Andali, meeting other mythical figures and perfoming feats of incredible might to cast out the giants, involving gaint hair care, strange megaflora, a spectral glass fortress, an excessively strange chess match, and a cloak of beards.
These trials characterize Aurelius as a well equipped, dependable leader who always has an answer. In the end, many of the giants were forced away, taking their hosts to the Feywild, where they found their place within the structure of the Courts, which they found integrated conveniently with their notion of the Ordning.

While there is substantial evidence this Gigantomachy did occur, many of the claims in these chapters are however completely unsubstantiated. It is widely believed that Aurelius did participate in the Gigantomachy, as he would have been of viable fighting age at the time, but it is highly unlikely he played as vital of a role as this biography would have us believe.
Indeed, the Gigantomachy itself was more of a civil war among giants than between giants and Mortals. And while it did result in many of them returning to the Feywild, it is unlikely that they were cast out by force rather than the convenience of migrating to to the open wilds and avoiding the explosion in population Mortalkind was experiencing at the time. Furthermore, there is little evidence to support the claim that Mortals were ever enslaved by giants on a grand scale outside of small pockets of cruelty manifested by the despots of the time. More likely, this was a localized event that has been exagerated to international scale.
As stated, Aurelius and a cohort of eladrin emigrated from the Feywild, bringing with them the tools needed to create a foothold, regardless of whoever they met on the other side of the gate. I imagine that if Aurelius had emerged from the Feywild and found only Mortals where he wished to raise the gates of his city, we would have recorded a much different history of Aurelius the Conquerer.
These stories, however, have taken root in the shorter-lived populations of Aurelia, and an idea is incredibly hard to kill.

— Xenophon, Head Archivist of Alexandria

15-24 Conquests of Aurelius Aureliadic Unification
25-72 Romance de Valus Marriage contracts
73-100 Golden War Obvi
101 The Peace Could probably write out this entire chapter
Epilogue and Editor's Notes Xenophon has opinions