Ether 14

As we begin to witness the final destruction of the Nephite nation we again see as it was amongst the Nephites -

"...there began to be a great curse upon all the land because of the iniquity of the people, in which, if a man should lay his tool or his sword upon his shelf, or upon the place whither he would keep it, behold, upon the morrow, he could not find it, so great was the curse upon the land."  (Book of Mormon  Ether 14:1)

As a note of warning, I believe that same curse will be upon this nation if wickedness and iniquity tends to prevail.

We see in several instances in the Book of Mormon where king fights with kings and even where the king is the last man standing.  For some, this may seem as a dramatic fairy tale or fabrication, but Hugh Nibley wrote -

"The insane wars of the Jaredite chiefs ended in the complete annihilation of both sides, with the kings the last to go. The same thing had almost happened earlier in the days of Akish, when a civil war between him and his sons reduced the population to thirty (Ether 9:12). This all seems improbable to us, but two circumstances peculiar to Asiatic warfare explain why the phenomenon is by no means without parallel: (1) Since every war is strictly a personal contest between kings, the battle must continue until one of the kings falls or is taken. (2) And yet things are so arranged that the king must be very last to fall, the whole army existing for the sole purpose of defending his person.

This is clearly seen in the game of chess, in which all pieces are expendable except the king, who can never be taken. "The shah in chess," writes M. E. Moghadam, "is not killed and does not die. The game is terminated when the shah is pressed to a position from which he cannot escape. This is in line with all good traditions of chess playing, and back of it the tradition of capturing the king in war rather than slaying him whenever this could be accomplished."36 You will recall the many instances in the book of Ether in which kings were kept in prison for many years but not killed. In the code of medieval chivalry, taken over from central Asia, the person of the king is sacred, and all others must perish in his defense. After the battle the victor may do what he will with his rival—and infinitely ingenious tortures were sometimes devised for the final reckoning—but as long as the war went on, the king could not die, for whenever he did die, the war was over, no matter how strong his surviving forces.

Even so, Shiz was willing to spare all of Coriantumr's subjects if he could only behead Coriantumr with his own sword. In that case, of course, the subjects would become his own. The circle of warriors, "large and mighty men as to the strength of men" (Ether 15:26) that fought around their kings to the last man, represent that same ancient institution, the sacred "shieldwall," which our own Norse ancestors took over from Asia and which meets us again and again in the wars of the tribes, in which on more than one occasion the king actually was the last to perish. So let no one think the final chapter of Ether is at all fanciful or overdrawn. Wars of extermination are a standard institution in the history of Asia." (They Take Up the Sword,  Hugh W. Nibley)

The Book of Ether becomes a more abridged record that reflects much of that of the people of Nephi.