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desdendelle
(Sergeant)
2024-10-06 12:42:28
It looks to me like Decapitated Army is a sub-trope of Keystone Army.
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.
Arivne
Since: Jan, 2001
2024-10-07 08:15:58
^^ @OP/Awkbut TVT
A better place to ask this type of question (about the differences between two similar tropes) is the Duplicate tropes discussion thread
AwkbutTVT
Since: Sep, 2023

So I was looking at the two tropes and I must say I can't really tell the difference. The former seems to imply that the "keystone" is just anything from a book to a portal, and Decapitated is when the Keystone is the leader, but the page image and several examples use the army being routed once the leader goes down as an example of a Keystone army. The decapitated army page says that Keystone is when "the villain's entire army collapses without him," but that seems to be what Decapitated Army itself is describing. I'm sure there is a difference, but I can't quite tell what it is.