thanks for playing!
The game has some "protection" agains invalid moves. For example if you are trying to clear a King(13) it won't let you use as a first card an Ace or a 2, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to clear it because the maximum you can add for a second card is a 10:
Ace + 10 = 11
2 + 10 = 12
I hope you see where I'm going. Similar with the Queen. It won't take an Ace as first card.
As for the third card not taking, I'm not sure. As long as its the same suit as the empire card it should work. Maybe there is a bug that I didn't encounter when testing.