Specifically in France and England, if a knight was the nephew or second cousin of a small count, what would he do when not at war?
hiya! here are a few threads to get you started
A book that you might find interesting is Georges Duby's William Marshall: The Flower of Chivalry. Duby uses a biographical poem about a particular knight as the launching pad for a discussion about how what it was like living that sort of life, what their values were, things like that. It's an interesting little book, and the poem that grounds it is a pretty rare thing: a biography of a medieval person who neither an aristocrat nor a high church official (which were often the same thing, of course). Quick read, too.