Kate Middleton & Prince William moving in together, on military base

After more than six years together (not including the handfull of times they allegedly “broke up”), Kate Middleton and Prince William are moving in together, OK! is reporting. While William is stationed in Shropshire, England for his pilot training, he plans to rent a home on the military base, and Kate will move in with him.

OK! is billing this as a major step, but it’s my understanding (from that Vanity Fair piece last year about Middleton) that they were practically living together already. Middleton has an apartment in London where Will stays when he’s not doing his military training. But, as we find out later in the OK! piece, they’re not really moving in officially, because “married quarters are formally for married couples,” so Middleton will still technically just be a “visitor”. Here’s OK!’s version:

Heir to the British throne Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton are moving one step closer to marriage as they’re in the middle of making plans to move in together. Looks like the eldest son of Charles and Diana has his eye on a refurbished house at a Royal Air Force base where he’s earning his wings as a helicopter pilot.

The 26-year-old and his gal-pal had been making plans to rent a home from a friend of the royal family, but it looks like security issues derailed that idea. So now he and Kate will be shacking up at the military base in Shropshire, UK, until September.

At that point, Billy boy will get some more hands-on experience at real-life air-sea rescue bases around Britain.

“Kate is thrilled that after all the waiting she and William will finally have a grown-up life together,” a family friend says. “She sometimes feels like they’re the world’s oldest teenagers still living with their parents.”

Officially, only William will be registered as living at the newly-decorated RAF quarters but Kate will be able to stay overnight as often as she likes.

An aide said: “Married quarters are formally for married couples… But the prince is, of course, allowed visitors and officers are allowed to live off base in secure accommodation.”

Kate and William have not shared a home together since they were both at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where they rented a cottage with friends.

From OK! Magazine

Ugh. I have really mixed feelings about all of this. I want to like Middleton because I think she’s smart, I think she really loves William, and I want to see her six-year effort pay off in a wedding. She’s put in the time, you know? She really wants it. But there’s something about how eager she is to turn everything in her life over to William’s whims that irritates me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally irritated by William too. I suspect he’s a lot like his dithering, ambivalent father, and he’s probably going to string Kate along for many years to come. But this is probably a small victory for Kate, so I hope she celebrates!

Kate Middleton and Prince William are shown after his graduation on 4/11/08. Credit: WENN

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