Terrible lore of the elves of my setting, my players like it tho, I just need to actually turn it into prose at some point. Sharing because fuck it why not i've been drinking a bit and want to talk about my elves a bit.

Elves refer to themselves as The Alvarin, with Elf being to their ear a debased human corruption of it.
The first Alvarin empire ruled most of the subcontinent (my setting is isolated to a region about the size of China + the east Indies).
After a few splits and reformations inspired by the Three Kingdoms they eventually unified for real under an elven demigod.
The empire lasted nearly 100,000 years (~six elvish lifetimes).
The empire fell when the culture lost sight of their inherent superiority to their farming equipment... I mean humans. Was pulled apart due to a split between the elder traditionalists, the younger reformists, and a whole lot of humans finding out that they too could learn magic.
The Alvarin, who are called High Elves by outsiders, retreated back to a magical grove that humans can't enter without fae guides as it exists half way between the world of men and the world of the faerie.
Those elves who were cut off in the retreat became wood elves or were enslaved by the human leaders who unified the ex-slaves.
Eventually, due to disgusting intermingling, very few humans in the current era don't have at least a little elf blood in them, and those with pronounced elvish features are city elves.
City elves are basically half-elves who bred true.
Player character elves are either Wood elves only (not that ruleset I use has race entries that granular)

Pic relatively unrelated, but I did once use her as inspo for a city elf who was the local lord's liaison to the mercenary company my PCs were working for.