That’s the problem. I don’t know. I don’t have the previous version/build. VisualGDB prompted me to update SysGCC, and that’s when the change occurred. It was always GCC 4.8.2, initialise_monitor_handles() was absolutely present, as it worked as expected. I have nothing overridden.
I’ve since switched to launchpad GCC 4.9, it’s initialise_monitor_handles() implementation works exactly as expected, without making a SVC request.