I think there was some serious debating over which was better, and the current won. The idea is that you make a 'winning move' not a 'losing move', as in, you and opponent are at 1 morale, you move queen to check opponent king and opponent loses - he was going to lose either way but the vibe remains - the game ended on a winning move.

what you are saying is that you should instead move your queen to check enemy king and the game says you lost because of it. There are times you can lose from making a move, but usually that involves attacking a phoenix or something else effect related.

there is also this subtle notion that the morale decay is derived from the opposition, and not your own army. As in, the enemy makes another strong move for the 100th time and your army loses morale because of it. If you need to adjust intuition, maybe it could be phrased as every move you make during decay is inflicting morale damage onto the enemy, or something. Perhaps the word decay itself is the contradictory part?

I also think if people had 1 morale remaining and knew any move ended in defeat from decay they would be much more likely to just stall the timer or alt-f4 or, at the very least, have a psychological response that would drag them in that direction, because the vibe there is as if they were forced to surrender rather than being 'legitimately' defeated. Complaints about morale decay itself would follow sometime after, probably.