The original culture of the unseelie was one of autocratic conquest. The Tromlui Empire spanned across half a continent before it crumbled. The unseelie enslaved the other fey nations that they came across, as well as many vaettir nations. The ruling class was a massive network of families and tribes, all interconnected and treacherous, who answered to the imperial family. The imperial castes were the lords, the warriors, the mystics and the clergy, the merchants, the scribes, and the slaves. The empire was a polytheistic ecclesiastic country.

Unseelie children were raised either by their parents or by slaves. By the age of 13, they would begin the work of their caste: lords learn to rule, warriors learn to fight, mystics and clergy learn their supernatural arts, merchants learn trading, scribes learn reading and writing and scholarship. Slaves were put to work as soon as they were able, no matter what age. Lords became adults by age 25, when they were able to inherit their predecessors' roles. Warriors were considered adults after their first kill, usually about the age of 15. Mystics and clergy were adults by age of 25, when they were allowed to study on their own. Merchants became adults by age 16, and scribes by 25. Each had no ritual of maturity, but simply got rights as members of their caste.

Politics were mostly between tribes or about successions. Every tribe was ruled by their lord caste. The treachery among them meant that constant feuds and wars broke out.

Among the unseelie, gender was never important; courtship was rare among the upper castes. Lords, warriors, and merchants would take sexual partners as they pleased from lower castes and had arranged marriages amongst their own castes. Mystics, clergy, and scribes were known to avoid marriage, but took sexual partners casually among themselves. Slaves were only allowed to breed if their owners said so, but many slaves married in secret.

Unseelies' main sources of food were the fear of their slaves and the flesh of their enemies. When the latter was not available, raw meat and blood from animals sufficed. Slaves did the work of herding, butchery, and farming (grains for the livestock), but warriors did the hunting. Slaves were responsible for most other labor except those involving math or writing, which were forbidden to them.

Slaves were able to buy their freedom through betraying their fellow slaves. This was rare, but it did occur, to put down the frequent uprisings. Ritual sacrifice was common.

Each year, the unseelie to this day ride out on very dark nights and ride through the night sky, terrorize the mortal world, taking the livelihoods of mortals they choose to torment.

Eventually, a massive slave rebellion destroyed the center of the empire's power, resulting in the death of the last empress. Her children were killed or captured by tribal leaders, and a civil war ensued. As the civil war threatened to end the unseelie nation, a group of mystics and priestesses sought out their Manifest, awakened her, and bid her take over the nation. Thus was the Unseelie Court born.