Tables are, as you say, limited. They're very limited in fact.
An outline within a table offers more possibilities.
Following up on what dr_andus described as an IM "that is strong with tables".
Think outline, tables, the possibility to show items in multiple locations, filtering, etc. etc.
Think of a family shown in an outline, children will be shown under each parent and parents will be shown under grandparents.

or,
every person can be shown at the top level, with children as, eh, child items, which means many people are shown multiple times.

This is using InfoQube. It is very powerful - I'm only a basic user myself, I struggle myself sometimes with e.g. the hierarchy/display options. What I'm trying to say is: that strength comes with a highish-learning-curve price.) Basic filtering is easy, very complex filtering is possible but not (yet) easy.
I linked spouses to each other. You could also create other subitems, related to each character and choose to show these or not. There is also a HTML pane where you can add further text (tables even!), etc, etc.