I think the unicode chess symbols are not quite in the spirit of terminal applications. It is also more intuitive to move the rook using algebraic notation, if the rook is denoted by r, rather than "♜". But certainly, viewing the board using unicode symbols is a very reasonable user setting, but I would err that it would not be default.

And "e2 e4" contains technically superflous information, yes. The application should be able to parse the most minimal algebraic notation possible, but also more verbose commands.