Here are some photos of Prince Harry at yesterday’s Virgin London Marathon. The London Marathon took place just six days after the Boston Marathon, and as with the Boston Marathon, London attracts some of the most elite runners in the world. In London, many of the runners wore black ribbons in honor of Boston, and they also had a moment of silence before the race started. I think Harry helped hand out medals and such, and I swear he looked kind of wistful, like he wished he could run with them. Also: how much stuff is Richard Branson going to tag with ‘Virgin’? Pretty soon they’ll just have to change the names to Virgin London and Virgin England.

Meanwhile, you know that Harry is still with his blonde, aristocratic girlfriend Cressida Bonas, right? Well, The Telegraph’s gossip guy Mandrake had a really eye-rolly story about how Harry is “ready to settle down” and how Cressida thinks she’s “far too young” to get married, so she’s been crying about it. Hahahaha. Yeah. I’m sure that’s exactly how it is!

Prince Harry wants to settle down with his girlfriend Cressida Bonas, but she is said to feel too young to marry. Characterised as a playboy, Prince Harry is, in fact, facing problems in his personal life because of his desire to settle down. Mandrake hears that the Prince, who turns 30 next year, has talked about marriage with his girlfriend, Cressida Bonas.

While many young women would be thrilled at the prospect of a royal wedding, the 24-year-old student at the Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance has, however, been upset.

“Cressida has been in floods of tears,” claims one of her friends. “Harry is coming on very strong, but she is all over the place. She thinks she is far too young to get married and is scared by all his talk of marriage and settling down.”

Mandrake disclosed last November that Prince Harry had been in frequent telephone contact with Cressida from Afghanistan, where he was serving a four-month tour of duty as an Apache helicopter co-pilot gunner.

“Harry has been ringing Cressida regularly,” one of her friends told me at the time. “He’s been pleading with her to ‘wait for him’ until he comes back. Cressida is still very fond of her ex-boyfriend and, since Harry’s been on the scene, he’s been after her again. Cressida is torn. She likes Harry, but is not the sort to be bothered about his title.”

The former boyfriend was Harry Wentworth-Stanley, 23, whose stepfather, the Marquess of Milford Haven, is a cousin of the Queen. The pair were a couple while students at Leeds University, but he went travelling after graduation and their romance cooled. Last July, she was said to be “desperate” to rekindle their relationship.

In January, the Prince gave a bad-tempered television interview from Camp Bastion in which he complained about his difficulties in finding love. He said potential princesses were put off by his position, rather than attracted by it.

“You ain’t ever going to find someone who’s going to jump into the position that it would hold,” he said. “Simple as that. If you find the right person, and everything feels right, then it takes time … especially for myself and my brother.”

Harry is understood to have been influenced deeply by the happy marriage of the Duke of Cambridge, 30. His best friend, Thomas van Straubenzee, 30, is to marry Lady Melissa Percy, the Duke of Northumberland’s daughter, later this year.

Cressida began her flirtation with Harry before he went to Afghanistan. Her half-sister, Isabella Calthorpe, once spurned Prince William’s affections. Last month, she married Sam Branson, the son of the Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson.

[From The Telegraph]

Okay, I’ll be fair to Cressida for one moment: I think it’s perfectly reasonable for any young woman to find the idea of spending one’s life as a royal consort to be… overwhelming, to say the least. Being a princess/duchess is not the best job at all, and as we can see with Duchess Kate’s predicament, if you’re not interested in public work or charity work, it shows. But! If you’re an aristocratic (or even just wealthy) young woman in the UK, and you don’t have a lot going on, this is what is expected of you. You marry someone like Harry. Someone titled, someone wealthy, someone well-connected. It’s not like Cressida is some naïf unaccustomed to this kind of life at all. She was born into it, she’s friends with princesses and she runs in the wealthiest echelon of English society. And at the end of the day… she wants it. I don’t believe this report, because I just think Cressida is trying to reel Harry in and he’s the one with his eye on other things (or other girls).

Photos courtesy of WENN.