I really like this frame and am--fascinated--by your comment about family. It's not something I've thought about much in terms of comparison, but you're right that there's a major difference. There's been a lot of theorizing on the state of family in the Middle Ages, largely because it seems different than what we're used to seeing. One critic even famously, and wrongly, claimed that childhood didn't exist in the Middle Ages--children were simply regarded as tiny adults that their parents only had moderate affection for. Others have suggested (perhaps more believably) that the high infant mortality rate impacted how people talked about families and children. I'm more inclined to think that we're just not reading the texts that focus on family, which raises questions than about the role of the family in chivalric discourse...