Entire agreement on how Veil gets screwed over by his own author.

For what it's worth, I found that Redwall stood up really well to an adult re-read recently, because it never gives you the leisure to consider that the rat horde are people too. The plot moves fast, and it's a really well-fought siege on everybody's part, so you only get to see the rats, ferrets, etc., in the context of their being this specific group of villains who have shown up to kill our heroes. I find that easier to accept without its being a sweeping judgement on all rat-ness. Then too, it's the first book, so the characters aren't doing the jaded thing where it's OK to kill rats on sight for the hell of it; we-the-mice aren't that self-righteous and bloodthirsty yet.

It also has the sparrows, who are hostile and scary to mice but who aren't set up as intrinsically evil, I recall. And from the other direction, Squire Gingivere is a lovely guy, but he's still a cat. I can accept "mice need to be afraid of everyone except other mice, until trustworthiness is proven" more easily than I can live with "mice are genetically good, vermin are genetically bad."

Then again, the foxes are chock-full of Romany stereotypes -- I think the mom fox even gets referred to as "that Gypsy" at some point -- so it's not like Redwall is free of weird animal-surrogate racism, it just goes in a different direction.

I want to reread Mattimeo now. Damn that was such a good adventure.