This is too simplistic.
If you write an entry about character A, and then write an entry about character B, and say little or nothing about their family life, and say nothing that suggests they are related or resemble one another very much - then that generates an implication that they're probably not related, and are independent entities.
A subsequent book that tells me that A is the parent, or sibling, of B is - by your criteria - a mere addition rather than a change. But from the point of view of many users of the lore about A and B it is going to be experienced as a change. Because it establishes a canonical link between two beings which were hitherto presented as (and hence used by GMs as) independent of one another.
When I used salamanders in my 4e game, which is the first time I've used them probably since the 80s, I didn't think of them as being slaves of efreeti. I though of them as indepdently-motivated elemental creatures who are "greedy and cruel . . ., quick to rob or enslave weaker folk. . . . [and] governed by dukes and duchesses, kings and queens." (MM, pp 226-27) This seems pretty consistent with how their presentation in the original MM, which says nothing about their personalities except that they are CE "creatures of the elemental plane of fire [who] come to the material plane occasionally for purposes known only to them." (MM p 85)
If I was to treat them as typically slaves of the efreet, that would affect the way I was using them, because it would require me to introduce additional background material to explain why these particular salamanders in my game are not slaves of any efreet.
The 4e MM has the following eladrin nobles: Bralani of Autumn Winds, and Ghaele of Winter. As best I can tell, these are original eladrin.
The 4e Bralani seems like a 4e version of the Bralani in the 3.5 MM. It has a "cloak of autumn gusts" difficult terrain aura and a whirlwind blast power, which seem to resemble the 3E Bralani's wind wall, gust of wind and whirlwind powers. The 4e statblock has longsword rather than scimitar, but the picture of the Bralani does have a scimitar, and that would not be a hard change to make for anyone who cared (they're both d8 weapons). (Oddly, the picture of the Bralani in the 3.5 MM has a spear, not a scimitar.)
The 4e Ghaele, on the other hand, seems quite different from the 3E one. The latter is a 14th level cleric with fairly typical angelic spell-like abilities (light, flame, a fear gaze that kills evil creatures, etc). Whereas in 4e there is a close burst "imperious wrath" power that is a bit like the fear power, but otherwsie it is a cold-based attacker.
But in 4e they are also extraplanar creatures of a CG bent (in D&D terms, elves are the paradigm of CG creatures):
Creatures with strong ties to nature, eladrin hail from shining cities in the Feywild. Their cities lie close enough to the natural world that they sometimes "cross over", appearing briefly in beautiful mountain valleys or deep forest glades before fading into the Feywild again. (MM, p 103)
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