Ashes to Crown Episode 3 Review: A Grand Princess Hands the Sword to the One Man Her Court Forbids

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

The Emperor's last edict makes Chu Zhao co-ruler with a Grand Mentor who resents her. Her first order is to crown a swordsman the whole court calls unfit — and the man under the false name turns out to be the one piece of her old life she never read correctly.

The hour opens on a corpse already cold. The Emperor passed away, a card reads, and the Anping Rebellion is over. Chu Zhao’s narration is steady, almost businesslike: In this life, I cut off Xiao Xun’s path to the throne. But this game to crush him has just begun. The triumph she fought for has arrived as a cold appointment rather than a victory. She is the Grand Princess now, raised by edict to co-rule — and power, it turns out, simply rearranges who is allowed to stand against her.

The Emperor’s edict makes Chu Zhao and Deng Yi co-rulers, and her first order is a provocation

Grand Mentor Deng Yi congratulates her with a smile that doesn’t reach anything. You got wealth and honor as you had longed for, he tells her, and she returns the courtesy — the same to you, Grand Mentor Deng. Both know what the other wanted, and both got it. The first real business is a vacancy: the old Imperial Guard Commander was involved and executed, and the post, Deng Yi reminds her, concerns the entire imperial city and even the royal clan.

Then she names her man. This is my first order. Fu Jiu, retainer of the Chu Clan, will be promoted to the Imperial Guard Commander. A retainer — not a noble, not a clansman — armed at court. Any objection, Grand Mentor? Deng Yi swallows it. As the new Commander takes the token, she gives the cleanest warning in the scene: Don’t regret it. Don’t make me regret it.

Far away on the frontier, a general gets the news mid-march — the Emperor is dead, his final edict names Chu Zhao as Grand Princess — and steadies into relief: at least, she’s safe now. Glad she’s safe. The words are barely out before a scout shouts that enemies are invading, and he’s calling his men to arm up. The court’s intrigue and the frontier’s war are the same war, fought at different ranges.

A child takes the throne, and Chu Zhao learns the Prime Minister already knows she needs no one

The enthronement is for a small boy. I want Zhao to be here, the new Emperor — Yu — insists, against ministers muttering that there is no precedent. He clutches her hand on the long walk to the throne: I don’t want to walk alone. You walk with me, all right? A chamberlain warns that if a woman interferes with politics, the state will collapse, and Chu Zhao cuts him off with his own history: when the Dowager Empress Xie ruled behind the curtain, he was the first to urge a boy to take the throne.

The most dangerous conversation comes afterward, with Xie Yanfang, the Prime Minister of the Gaoyang Xie Clan and the boy’s uncle by blood. He thanks her for saving Yu’s life — then refuses the flattery she offers. You didn’t get where you are by relying on my clan. Instead, my clan relied on you. It is the rarest thing she can hear at court: a man who sees her clearly and says so. Her narration files him precisely — in the previous life, he was best at disguising, feigning a long illness in Gaoyang while he secretly gathered private troops and expanded his power. She tests his sincerity, he parries it, and his parting line carries the whole register of it: the paths in this palace are treacherous.

A false name comes undone, and the Commander she chose is revealed as a discarded Xie

The episode’s spine is the slow unmasking of Fu Jiu. Deng Yi corners her with the truth she has been sitting on — he’s a Xie, the ninth child of the Xie Family, Xie Yanlai. Her answer stops him cold: I know.

The flashbacks fill in why the name was buried. As a boy, Xie Yanlai was the illegitimate son of a brothel woman, held down by his own clansmen — our clan doesn’t want dirty people — while they pierced his ear like livestock to be sold. He refuses medicine afterward; he’ll keep the wound. This will become part of my flesh and blood and remind me day after day not to forget how they pierced my ear. And one day, they will be pierced by me. Later, beaten with eighteen lashes for burning the ancestral tablets, he’s met by an elder brother who remembers a softer child — one who wrapped a crippled dog in the doghouse and said everything had a soul. Xie Yanlai answers the only way that protects him now: I’m Fu Jiu. I’m not your brother. The reply is quiet and final: I am your elder brother. I don’t need to pretend.

Deng Yi’s real fear is what the Tally means in a Xie hand. Chu Zhao does not argue the politics; she dissolves it in gifts. Seven shops in Yongfeng Alley, glazed cups, glowing pearls — and, the one that lands, millet brought at full gallop from his homeland, because his mother misses it. Everyone has his weakness. So do you, Deng Yi. She buys the man who controls the court the same way she sheathes her claws before Xie Yanfang: by feeding each one the thing he can’t refuse.

Xie Yanlai refuses the cloak, and Chu Zhao refuses to take the refusal as final

She comes to him at night with a cloak. He won’t take it — I’m used to cotton, I won’t like fancy fabrics — and she answers with its real purpose. Cotton is too soft to guard against arrows. It is armor, not a gift. He names the test for what it is: Your Highness, are you testing me or trying to win me over? Then she asks outright: will you consider becoming my ally?

He won’t. He lays out the ledger against her — Xie Yanfang heads the ministers, Deng Yi controls speech, Xiao Xun holds Xiaonan Prefecture, and you, what do you have? He tells her to take the cloak back. She lets him, but leaves the door open. Life is like a chess game. Nothing is set yet. If one day you change your mind, come to me anytime. Even rejected, she treats his no as a position on the board, not a wall.

The double from her first life — all her stored resentment — presses her toward the easy story: you can finally take revenge. Chu Zhao refuses to be reduced to it. Revenge. That’s not my only desire. She wants to rule behind the curtain, to hold the real power and keep her father and herself alive. Her true wish is colder and larger than blood: fate won’t repeat itself.

Chu Zhao walks into court, and Xiao Xun answers with a dream

The ministers erupt when she attends the daily court session. A woman outside the royal clan takes charge of politics. Isn’t that ridiculous? She disarms them one at a time. To the officer demanding who made the rule that lets her attend, she recalls that a few days ago, you failed your duty and should by law have been executed; to the chamberlain ranting about propriety, she notes he is father-in-law to the prince who killed his elder brother. When the noise won’t stop, she orders Commander Xie to repeat her command — present your reports, or the court is dismissed — and the room folds.

Then Xiao Xun makes his move, soft as everything he does. He reports a dream: the late Emperor wept blood, yearning for temple rites. Chu Zhao turns it back on him — why did the late Emperor visit a hostage rather than his own grandson, does the late Emperor also think your branch is closer to him than the Crown Prince? Outmaneuvered for the moment, Xiao Xun lets the sacrifice be assigned to Deng Yi and Xie Yanfang — but it was never an accident, and Chu Zhao knows it. By the hour’s end, Xie Yanlai has come round — it’s my duty to protect Your Highness, he insists, refusing to call it a deal — and she names what she has against four powerful men: I have you, who will risk his life for me. Her last instruction is to read Xiao Xun, not panic at him. I’ll see how he’s going to play his game.

Tiny details worth clocking

• Xie Yanlai keeps the ear wound on purpose, a debt ledger written into his body — the motive sits in one refused dose of medicine.
• Deng Yi falls not to the shops or the pearls but to millet from home for his mother; greed is the cover story, filial guilt the lever.
• The boy emperor’s Nine-ring Puzzle is a child’s toy carried into a deadly throne room, and Chu Zhao quietly takes it away — a reminder of who she’s protecting.
• Xie Yanfang’s feigned illness in Gaoyang mirrors the Lord of Xiaonan’s claim of being bedridden over the late Emperor’s death — two powerful men behind the same excuse, only one of whom Chu Zhao trusts at all.
• The crippled dog wrapped in the doghouse is the only glimpse of who Xie Yanlai was before the clan turned him into Fu Jiu.

Verdict

The premiere had the easier job — a whole life to grieve in flashback. This hour does the harder thing: build the second life forward, brick by brick, with everyone around Chu Zhao remembering a future she’s quietly unmaking. It holds because the politics are concrete. She doesn’t win the court with a speech; she wins it by knowing each man’s specific weakness and paying it — millet for one, flattery for another, armor for the third. The reveal that Fu Jiu is a discarded Xie heir hands her one genuine ally and one genuine mystery, and her trust never outruns her caution.

Pieces to track: the sacrifice Xiao Xun engineered and Chu Zhao has chosen to wait out rather than block, the alliance Xie Yanlai still refuses to call an alliance, Deng Yi’s loyalty that lasts exactly as long as the gifts do, and the frontier general who heard she was safe now and went straight back to war. The hour closes with Chu Zhao declining to panic — which, given what she remembers, is its own kind of nerve.

Rating: 8.1/10

More episodes from Ashes to Crown — A betrayed empress, reborn to undo her own ruin. Jump to any episode in the season:

Reviewed by Mira Vance · QuizFandom Editor & Lead Reviewer. Every rating is an honest per-watch assessment from the desk that also writes the quizzes — not a press release rehash.

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