Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have lost another staff member with a long-time aide leaving them to set up their own company.

It has emerged that their global press secretary Ashley Hansen has decided to step down from her role working for the Sussexes after two years. It comes just days after she gushed about working for the couple in a US magazine after reports in another publication that Meghan ‘belittles’ staff and is known as ‘Duchess Difficult’.

However, Ms Hansen has not severed ties completely with Harry and Meghan. She has set up her own LA-based PR consultancy Three Gate Strategies. And it has been reported that she will continue to represent and advise Harry and Meghan as well as other clients across entertainment, tech, and finance.

Meghan said in a statement: “We are so proud of Ashley, especially as a female entrepreneur. We look forward to having her focused expertise on our business and creative projects and her continued oversight of our communications team. My husband and I are excited to be alongside Ashley as she builds something extraordinarily special with her firm.”

While Ms Hansen said: “I am incredibly grateful to The Duke and Duchess for their continued trust in me. Their unwavering support and belief in my new firm has been meaningful and is a testament to their leadership. I knew when they first hired me that they were giving me the opportunity of a lifetime and I couldn’t be happier to continue working together.”

The news that Ms Hansen is leaving her role – although still representing the couple – comes after a war of words erupted between current and former employees of Harry and Meghan about their experiences of working for the Sussexes.

Since moving to the US four years ago, the pair have earned a reputation for having a high staff turnover at their Archewell organisation. Harry’s former chief of staff Josh Kettler lasted just three months in his role before he left. And last month, allegations that Meghan “belittles people”, “doesn’t take advice” and has the nickname “Duchess Difficult” surfaced in the American title Hollywood Reporter, prompting other staff to leap to her defence.

One of them was Ms Hansen, who said her bosses could not be more supportive. She explained to US Weekly magazine that she was forced to take time off work following a serious surgery – and was afterwards inundated with supportive phone calls, care packages and flowers from Meghan.

She said: “When I told them, I was met with the kind of concern and care a parent would express if it were their own child.” She added: “Most profoundly to me, Meghan would personally reach out to my husband daily to make sure that we both were OK and had support. It meant so much to him and even more to me. You don’t realise how much that kind of kindness and thought means until you need it.”

Meanwhile, others said they’ve been “dumbfounded” by the latest “Duchess Difficult” claims with one anonymous staff telling the magazine: “This is the first company I’ve worked [where I] liked every person. Harry and Meghan picked the best of the best from every field and watered the seeds for them to flourish. We have an enormous microscope on us. But good things are happening.”

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