Who living has the most knighthoods?

Answer 1

Given that Britain and the Holy See have more extant orders that give out knighthoods than any other country a roman catholic member of the British royal family is the most likely candidate - especially since a member of the royal family, being 'trans-national' won't be limited to a specific country of the empire/commonwealth. I.e. they are nominally English and Scottish, and Welsh and Irish and Canadian etc etc

Roman Catholic members of the British Royal family being thin on the ground (RCs are excluded from the line of succession) the senior members of the royal family are still in the running because while they are unlikely to get a Papal gong there are enough countries around that give out knighthoods to more than make up for their ineligibility for the ones given out under the Order of Pius IX, the Order of St. Gregory the Great, the Order of St. Sylvester Pope and Martyr, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of the German House of St. Mary in Jerusalem.

The British sovereign however is at a distinct disadvantage because she often heads the British/Commonwealth orders and tends not to give herself knighthoods. However while this means her husband (Prince Phillip) and son the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles) get lots of British/commonwealth knighthoods what they don't necessarily get are all the rarer knighthoods the Queen gets as a head of state. [Although the current Queen did get 2 British 'knighthoods'; Order of the Garter and Order of St John before she became queen]. And since then she has received knighthoods from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Holland, Denmark, Poland and Thailand and Liberia - I may well have missed some. Perhaps surprisingly her husband the Duke of Edinburgh does even better because he gets knighthoods from all the British Orders of which his wife is sovereign plus, as a former Greek Prince he has knighthoods from 4 different Greek Orders (Sts George & Constantine, Order of the Redeemer, Order of George I and Order of the Phoenix) and many of the other ones the Queen also has. Charles has yet to accumulate many of the knighthoods his parents have. Of course, there are a number of other long lived monarchs in other parts of Europe who, as long standing heads of State may will give Elizabeth, Phillip and Charles a run for their money in accumulating knighthoods.

However, leaving royalty aside who all seem to give each other knighthoods and other honours the way the rest of us give out greetings cards I would like to propose the following candidate as the living person with the most knighthoods - Ninian Stephen who has knighthoods from 5 different orders, namely the Order of the Garter, the Order of Australia, the Royal Victorian Order, the Order of Sts Michael & George and the Order of the British Empire.