Is Prince Harry Going To Get Engaged?

While the royal family’s answer to Liz Taylor and Richard Burton (that’s Fergie and Andrew) have been grabbing the most wedding rumors this week, there is every possibility that a more imminent engagement could be in the cards.

And for Prince Harry to marry his girlfriend of almost two years, Cressida Bonas, we wouldn’t have to wait for Prince Philip to die first, which is undoubtedly a precondition of any fresh York hookup.

Speculating about when and with whom Harry might walk down the aisle has been a popular pastime ever since his brother's nuptials, and the truth is, like the rest of us, he ain’t getting any younger.

And Harry is said by friends to be increasingly convinced that the party-loving blonde blueblood is “the one,” with friends of the young royals telling The Royalist that Cressida is "definitely the most serious relationship Harry has been in since Chelsy."

Harry has made no secret of his desire to be wed, telling interviewers that it was just a matter of finding the right woman for the "role" and that he was devastated when Chelsy Davy left him shortly after the wedding of William and Kate.

Chelsy and Harry were well matched (both famed by their set of rowdy toffs for being equally wild in London's clubs), but in the end, Chelsy couldn’t face being a royal bride. Ironically, while William’s marriage convinced Harry that the sooner he tied the knot, the better, it only convinced Chelsy that a life led in the glare of a million flashbulbs as Princess Harry would be an intolerable existence.

Harry met Cressida through his cousin Eugenie, and the two started dating in 2012.

Cressida comes from a free-spirited aristocratic family—her mother, Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, was a famous and much-wed ’60s society beauty—and was consequently unfazed when her new boyfriend was photographed naked in Vegas, just a few days after holidaying with her at Richard Branson’s Caribbean paradise, Necker Island.

In Cressie’s family, it would be rather odd not to get up to such hijinks on one’s holiday. She, of course, also knew that Harry was on a predeployment blowout.

Since then, the couple has only gotten closer, and according to a report in the Daily Star, Harry has even taken to joking, "They are all waiting for me to propose any day."

A pivotal moment was when they were forced to formally "come out" as a couple after being photographed cuddling publicly on a ski trip—and not attempting to hide their affection from each other at a family dinner thrown by Prince Andrew on the same trip.

However, it was a rare open display of togetherness by the couple, who take great precautions not to be pictured together—Harry has learned a lot since the clubbing-with-Chelsy days and is rarely seen out and about in London anymore—and meet almost exclusively behind closed doors at friends’ houses. Harry is understandably keen to try to protect Cressida from snooping snappers. Earlier this month the two truly got away from it all when they went on an African safari with Eugenie and her boyfriend.

But while Harry is keen, Cressida, who is just 24 and recently graduated from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Greenwich, may not be ready to give up her dreams of a career as a performer just yet.

Plus, there is another reason to fear delay.

Princess Beatrice is widely thought to be on the point of announcing her betrothal to her boyfriend of six years, Dave Clark. And you can’t really have two royal weddings in one year, can you?