Still wondering if there was any significance to all the Greek and Bulgarian young folks being there besides family friendship....
The Greeks are distant cousins of the Norwegian royal family in more than one line, as they all descend both from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and King Christian IX of Denmark.
Aha, so it was an old elephant IA got. Restored and brushed up for occasion. Because the text states that QMII's monogram was painted on the elephant and QMII has after all been Queen for quite a few years!
No new elephants are made, unless the DRF run short of elephants or some of the old ones are lost. Otherwise the elephants are put in storage when the holder dies and the elephant returned, until someone new is presented with the order - in this case IA.
There are, I understand, 72 elephants in service at present, both in circulation and in storage.
Some of them are very old!
I believe that is the norm for most of the older European orders of chivalry and is also the case for the Garter or the Golden Fleece for example, i.e. the insignia (or part of it) must be returned when the knight passes away and is then presented to a new inductee, sometimes within the same family in the case of royal knights.
I wonder about the fact that none of the greek attendants had posted pictures on instagram. That is strange. Usually they are quite early with postings!
Prince Achileas-Andreas was on the official guest list, but I believe he was not at the dinner yesterday. I wonder what happened for him to pull out of the event at the last minute after having confirmed his presence.
In fact, they do not. Sonja has a pronounced non-American accent when she speaks English, as does Haakon (despite Berkeley). Harald can switch between British and US, but tends to only use his American in the US, seemingly. Don't know how MM sounds. Going back further, King Olav naturally spoke perfect royal British RP, so that's 3 generations, three different English accents, now four considering IA and Harald's are very different.
It is likely Ingrid was taught this version of English at school, but the family is a very mixed grab bag as far as English goes, especially since they don't speak it amongst themselves.
I have interacted professionally with colleagues from several regions/countries in Europe (Spain/Portugal, Benelux, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and, more rarely, Eastern Europe). Normally they either speak English with a foreign accent (especially people from Southern Europe and France, sometimes also from Germany), which is perfectly normal, or they speak with what I call the neutral "international English" accent that is generally closer to an American pronunciation, but not quite with the General American vowels and intonation. It is interesting that, although British spelling and vocabulary are normally taught in continental Europe, it is very rare to find a non-Brit in the continent who speaks English with a British accent. I also think that is understandable because, first, British accents, even standard RP, are more difficult to learn or acquire than other English dialects in my humble, non-expert opinion, and, second, people overseas are generally more exposed to US media (movies, TV, music, etc.) than British content.