Prince Andrew may have received a major blow to his effort to rehabilitate his reputation as he continues to be publicly excoriated for his friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Jason Stein, the master “spin doctor” hired a month ago to craft Andrew’s communications strategy and to repair his damaged reputation, has already quit, the Daily Mail reported over the weekend.

There was no reason given for the sudden departure of Stein, who was only 28 but who was labeled “a master of the dark arts” in strategic messaging during times of crisis and scandal, according to Elaine Lui of Lainey Gossip. Before being employed, however briefly as Andrew’s communications secretary, he had worked for Amber Rudd, a Conservative former MP and British home secretary, the Sun reported.

Friends simply told the Daily Mail that Stein no longer worked for the Duke of York and was set to start a new job.

The Daily Mail said Stein’s “abrupt departure will be seen as a further blow to the prince,” while Lui reported Monday that his leaving should be “a big story” — at least as much as when the tabloids make a fuss about a staff member quitting the employ of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

“Isn’t it fair to at least wonder if the situation with Andrew is so bad that even a ‘master of the dark arts’ can’t spin it in a positive direction?” Lui wrote. “How bad could it be if a PR expert specializing in scandal has to walk away?”

Andrew currently is in Bangkok, Thailand, where he spoke at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit 2019 Sunday on the need to provide entrepreneurial opportunities for young people, the Bangkok Post reported. During his Bangkok visit, Andrew also met with members of Thai royalty.

The Sun reported in early October that Stein had been hired and that he would report directly to Andrew’s private secretary, rather than to the Buckingham palace press office.

Stein’s friends insisted to the Daily Mail that he had no role in the recent “pathetic” efforts by Andrew’s friends to downplay his Epstein connections or to discredit a woman who has accused him of having sex with her when she was one of Epstein’s underage “sex slaves,” as Lui wrote.

These efforts have included claiming that two notorious Epstein-related photos of Andrew had either been faked or manipulated.

Stein’s friends said he “had no involvement in the fake-pictures claims,” the Daily Mail reported.

Since Epstein’s Aug. 10 death by a reported suicide, Andrew has faced intensified scrutiny over his friendship with the disgraced multimillionaire financier who had been jailed in Manhattan on new federal sex trafficking charges.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 35, also has renewed her allegations that Epstein and his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell forced her to have sex with Andrew three times in 2001 when she was 17.

As part of those allegations, a notorious photo of Andrew has circulated; the image shows the duke with his arm around Giuffre on the night in London in 2001 when she said they had sex.

Andrew’s friends initially attempted the so-called “chubby fingers” defense: They said the photo with Guiffre must be fake because Andrew’s fingers in real life are “chubbier” than those in the photo.

More recently, Andrew’s friends told the Sunday Times on Oct. 27 that they had hired a forensic expert to show that this 2001 photo was faked.

The friends said the forensic expert would also show that a December 2010 photo of Andrew and Epstein walking together in New York’s Central Park had been set up by Epstein himself.

The financier was hosting Andrew at his Manhattan mansion for several days in December 2010, apparently hoping that his connection to British royalty would burnish his reputation. Epstein was first investigated in the mid-2000s for sex trafficking and ended up serving a controversial 13-month county jail term after pleading guilty to soliciting sex from a minor.

Andrew’s friends put forward the argument in the Sunday Times that Andrew was the “victim” of an elaborate set-up, in which Epstein arranged to have the Central Park photo taken in order to boost his image. They have also said that Andrew only traveled to New York in December 2010 to meet with Epstein in person to formally end their friendship.

Along with the “chubby” fingers defense, the idea that Andrew flew across the Atlantic Ocean simply to end his friendship with Epstein in person has been derided by royal observers and on social media.

For one thing, if Andrew wanted to deliver a “breakup” message to Epstein personally, multiple news reports show that he dragged things out for nearly a week. He did so while evidently enjoying the multimillionaire financier’s lavish hospitality. In addition to Epstein taking Andrew on that Central Park walk, the financier also reportedly organized an intimate dinner with New York media stars to honor the duke and arranged for the duke to receive foot massages from two attractive young Russian women.