Not sure about the other points, however a young noble raising to a title would not at all be widely recognized. Maybe within his own fief, alright, but they didn't have TVs in Middle Ages
No one would know you outside of your very tiny circuit of relatives and servants. As for money, only merchants and the clergy had real cash, most the rich of a knight or noble was in his land and crusading, fighting in tournaments and battling your neightbor were the only ways to get some actual money, otherwise you just had lots of grain, games, mybe fruits and some tools.
(That could be interesting, if it was possible, to give starting characters something to represent their trade's goods; Merchants getting furs, spices, salt or leatherwork. Nobles getting iron, wheath, tools and perhaps slightly better equipment - A horse, a mail shirt and a decent helm, a shield and a old, cracked lance or something. Just to make it way more difficult for those like me who start with Game Poachers or similar).
Tournaments also were extremely popular in this period of history, so of course there's an enphasy on them. I'm actually very curious to see how they will be revamped because Warband system isn't that faithful to the real thing. In theory, up until later, you could make a tournament simply meeting another bunch of roaming knights and challenging them. It wasn't always something strictly arranged and ruled yet, I think. Find another group of young men willing to battle for ransom and some fame around the countryside and you're done! Big, bloddy, vicious tournament
Which leads me to another point. Not being overly expert on the matter, unnable to come up with numbers and statistics, I still find the ratio of knights fairly plausible. I see most lord, even kings infact, with rarely more then 2 Miles. I, as the enriched, wealthy, land-owning merchant I am hardly manage to keep 4 in my army during war. (Ye, I waited until I earned over 100k denars before taking up knighthood. Before that, it was always caravan escort and tournaments all over ^^..Anyway...). On the other hand, I recently read that tournaments in William Marshal's time (admittedly much earlier but might still serve as an example) were fought with
many hundreds of knights. Even considering they might have come from distant regions, I doubt there were so few, after all. Currently, there are way less then 1 thousand knights in Europe at any time. Which might actually be too few instead of too many, I think.
