Tom Sykes Flew to Geneva for Meghan Sussex After Skipping Kate’s Italy Trip

Tom Sykes, a Daily Beast royal editor and The Royalist author, has mastered a peculiar brand of royal journalism that runs on a simple formula: declare Meghan Sussex irrelevant, desperate and over, then build an entire media career around proving otherwise.

His coverage is not merely skeptical, it is openly hostile. On his Royalist podcast, Sykes gleefully reported that Montecito neighbours consider the Sussexes’ home a “laughing stock.” He mocked their kitchen as looking “straight out of the Olive Garden, circa 1994” and criticised them for not demolishing a $14 million house, a standard practice among billionaires he seemed to admire. This is petty sneering dressed up as journalism.

Beyond such personal digs, Sykes frequently relies on anonymous palace-adjacent sources, former staff claims and what friends of Prince William are allegedly saying. His reporting fixates on Meghan’s public image, management style, social media presence and what he frames as her contradictions, while rarely extending the same scrutiny to the working royals who actually receive public funding.

So with Meghan appearing in Geneva on May 17 for the Lost Screen Memorial, an installation created by Archewell Philanthropies in partnership with The Parents’ Network and the World Health Organization, honouring children who died after online violence, cyberbullying, grooming, sextortion and exposure to self-harm content, Sykes is reportedly making a trip to cover her. That may be his right, but it exposes a glaring hypocrisy: journalists who claim Meghan is irrelevant still chase her across borders. The optics are not just awful; they reveal a press corps that cannot quit the woman it claims to despise.

The reporter who says Meghan is irrelevant still showed up

To recap, Meghan is travelling solo to Switzerland for an event that had nothing to do with the royal circus. She will join WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, global health leaders, and families who lost children to online harm. She will speak about the urgent need for stronger global protections for children online. The memorial is to feature 50 illuminated lock screens, each one the final phone background of a child who died. This is serious, heartbreaking, and entirely focused on policy and grief. And Tom Sykes finds it necessary to be on the ground in Geneva and watching.

So if Meghan is irrelevant, why is she worth a flight to Switzerland? If the Sussexes are finished, why does their every move require newsletters, podcasts, live commentary and moral analysis? If Meghan is just a former working royal with no institutional power, why does the royal media ecosystem still treat her like the main event? The answer is obvious. Meghan is not irrelevant to them. She is valuable.

The Sussex outrage economy needs her to matter

Tom Sykes is not the only one playing this game, but his decision to fly to Geneva while skipping Kate’s Italy trip reveals the double standard. Kate gets soft‑focus coverage from a distance, which, quite frankly, produced no tangible results and was just a PR tick‑box exercise – a way for the media to point to Kate as “working” because she is the royal with the lowest engagements, even before her cancer episode.

Meghan gets boots on the ground, hostile framing, and a critic standing in the crowd ready to twist her words. And the worst part? The press pretends this is normal. They call it “holding power to account.” But Meghan is not a head of state. She is not a lawmaker. She is a non-working royal, a public figure running a philanthropy, raising two young children, and occasionally speaking at events that matter to her. If she is truly irrelevant, why is she worth flying across Europe to cover?

Ew, Sykes today in Geneva(🤦‍♂️ allegedly, he's gone there) to "report" on people he calls irrelevant and whose mansion he claims isn’t even that great: “Meghan in a lilac designer gown (not a gown) in her massive, magnificent Montecito mansion” Prob others will go too. Now #mute pic.twitter.com/RwrcTrVyGM

— Nico Mac (@Nicomac_666) May 17, 2026

The elephant in the room is not Meghan

Sykes reportedly posted about being in Geneva, noting Meghan’s Instagram following and implying hypocrisy about her speaking on social media’s dangers while having a platform herself. It is a tired argument. Meghan is an adult. She is not a child. She protects her children by not showing their faces. Meghan’s advocacy is about children facing online harm, not whether an adult woman can have an Instagram account.

But the real “elephant in the room” is the royal media’s own behaviour. They chase Meghan. They watch her. They write about her. They sell her image to an audience that claims to despise her, all while insisting she no longer matters. If that is not a strange economic arrangement, nothing is.

Final thoughts

Tom Sykes flying to Geneva for Meghan Sussex proves something the press will never admit. She is not irrelevant. She is not over. She remains one of the most powerful figures in the royal‑media ecosystem, not because she seeks the spotlight, but because the spotlight refuses to leave her alone.

Kate’s Italy trip could be covered with a few nice photos and a press release. Meghan’s Geneva appearance required live coverage, hostile interrogation and a journalist willing to travel.

So while the press says Meghan wants attention, the people who keep showing up are not Meghan. They are the reporters who cannot stop watching her.

If she is so irrelevant, stop chasing her. But they will not because the outrage economy depends on her. And that, more than anything, is the real story.