Still doesn't change the fact the fluff about the pistoliers doesn't make any sense to me. Fluff has to be somewhat logical and realistic/believable for me. But hey feel free to accept any fluff that is written. I delete the parts I don't like and make up my own fluff .
Fair enough, but let me expand my point less flippantly:
Your source says that the gendarmes adopted pistolier tactics when faced with pistoliers. Specifically, it says that powerful enemy shooting messed up their charges.
Now look at the Empire, and the enemies it typically faces: Chaos to the north, Brets to the west, Orcs to the east, undead in sylvania. None of these guys have shooting of any significance, so there's no incentive for Empire knights to become more light cavalry.
Likewise, the issue I have with chapter-specific banners is that this would prohibit taking doubles of said chapter of knights.
No, no it would not. Did you even read my last post? There is a chapter-specific banner for white wolves, but it doesn't prevent you from taking multiples of white wolves.
The fact is the different knightly orders aren't all that different: They're dudes on a horse with a lance. The WHFB stat system has very low granularity: the difference between t3 and t4 is that between an ordinary human and 7 foot orc that can keep fighting after losing a limb. difference between s4 and s5 is an very strong human human and a frikkin dragon. So making stat differences between the orders effectively makes different orders members of different species. And the fact that some stats are far more useful than others means that the 'best' order is the only one that will get used: if WW gets +1 str and blazing sun gets +1 I, no-one will be using blazing sun knights.
Using magic banners allows you to communicate the flavour of an order without having that do things that are otherwise impossible for humas. It means that only one unit per army is going to be the pinnacle of white wolfyness or blazing sunnyness, but that's fine, the regular career knights of each order are going to pretty similar to one another, only the best knights are going to exemplify the virtues of their order so completely as to justify expression in the (low granularity) rules.
Put it another way: can you tell me any meaningful difference in equipiment or doctrine between contemporary units of, say, templars and hospitalliers? Or do you want empire knights to turn into 40k chapters, where each one is a caricature of the viking berserker or bloodthirsty maniac or whatever?
Anyway, who says knights are just 'anonymous tincan stormtroopers'? That's a totally unjustified extrapolation made from the fact that they are Core troops. Instead of giving them cheezy stat upgrades or preventing the rest of us from taking more than 2 units by making them special, why not simply recognise the fact that you can be a core troop and a shiny elite at the same time? Dwarf longbeards are, so are Lothern sea guard (fluffwise).