Prince William has been all over the place the past few weeks, giving interviews and showing up to various events. What’s gotten into the usually press-shy prince? I have no idea. But it was just a matter of time before someone asked him the obvious question, the question that he’s been dodging for years and years. That question? “So, are you going to marry Kate Middleton or what?” The BBC reports that while Will was touring a veterans’ physical rehab center, a blind serviceman asked him that very question (worded differently, probably). Will responded “You’ll have to wait a while yet” (BBC video here). Well, at least Will didn’t say, “You’ll see it happen one day – oops, I mean, you’ll read about – I mean… never mind.”

It’s the question that keeps coming up – and the one he keeps playfully deflecting.

During a visit to a military rehab center on Monday, Prince William was asked by a blinded British serviceman, Simon Brown, whether he could expect an invitation to a royal wedding sometime in the near future, the BBC reports.

“You will have to wait a while yet, I think,” William replied, laughing.

He’s getting used to people asking. Last month during his visit to Australia, it was an elderly aboriginal woman who pressed him for a wedding date.

“As I keep saying,” he replied then, “wait and see.”

William, 27, has been dating Kate Middleton, 28, whom he met at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, since 2003. They split briefly in 2007 but reconciled.

There has been speculation in recent months that Buckingham Palace might be quietly preparing for a wedding, perhaps to coincide with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 – the 60th anniversary of her coronation.

[From People]

Some days, I actually manage a smidge of pity for Kate Middleton. She’s like the glossiest example of a girl who put all of relationship eggs in one basket, and might have made a disastrous call. She and Prince William have been dating since 2003-ish, so it’s been seven or eight years that they’ve been in each other’s lives romantically, although they have broken up on at least two occasions that were documented, the last time in 2007. Still, let’s go with the longer number – eight years of involvement with a guy, a dude, the future Prince of Wales and the future King of England. Kate might have thought she got the golden ticket. She might have thought that if she bided her time and did and said the right things long enough, she would get her reward, that which she wanted most of all: to be Will’s wife.

Before everyone jumps up my ass and starts yelling about feminism, let me just say – again – that this is really how I think Kate feels. She wants to get married, and she wants it to be William. She’s already planned her life around him and his needs. She only takes on jobs where she can be at the prince’s beck and call. Which is pretty easy for her, considering her family is rich. Nouveau-riche, actually. Which is why the whole relationship is such a coup for her, and probably why she’s put all of her eggs into one basket. And this lack of artifice, this blatant need and want and desire of Kate’s to get married, to settle down, to nail this sh-t down is probably why William continues to make her wait. Maybe if she played it a little bit cooler, got a little distance, took a time out and said to Will, “You know what? I’m taking a job in America, a–hole,” William might realize that Kate is the right choice. Or he might get over her quickly and just start dating a string of pretty, young, well-connected things, and Kate will become Camilla Parker-Bowles incarnate. Either/or.

William at the rehab facility on February 22, 2010. Kate Middleton on June 27, 2008. Credit for all: Daniel Deme / WENN.