Something to consider that I hope seemed odd to more than just me.

[Ashleg]

Exactly!

[The Skarzs]

Like how I'm going to rip out my readers' hearts.

[KoudoawaiaVortex]

My favorite characters always die, no joke.

Same since I always tend to really like the fox characters and the fox characters /always/ die at some point. I've never liked that.

[Ashleg]

Seers, eh?

[MeadowR]

That interesting fox captain in... Triss? deserved better.

[Ashleg]

Plugg Firetail? Yeah.

[The Skarzs]

He was in poor employment.

[NovaNocturne]

I think a lot of this can be explained by how Brian Jacques explained his choice of species for characters. It certainly looks like a lot of species-xenophobia though. He stated "The bad creatures are those which are traditionally bad in European folk lore and have come to be regarded as sly or mean or evil.The good creatures are mostly small and defenceless, with the exception of the badgers." As well as "The characters aren't evil because they're vermin, they're vermin because they're evil."

I think the takeaway here is that he intended the species to be a commentary on their behavior, not the other way around. Even though we know he didn't even keep to this strictly himself. As you have pointed out, Veil, Plugg, Romsca... I think it would have been a more powerful writing tool IF he didn't subvert it so much. By being inconsistent though, it also ended up making his stories and by proxy, the "Good" characters look very judgemental.

[Jetthebinturong]

Thing is, out-of-universe justification doesn't apply to in-universe theorising. I know why Jacques chose which species to use, and I just don't care. In cases like these, Word of God doesn't really matter since it's not something that works in-universe. What happened in universe is that several entire species are just evil for no clear reason.

[The Skarzs]

Part of that may be that he didn't read other authors' works, and the only ideas he got were ones he came up with himself.

[Wylder Treejumper]

If you do a little bit of study, you can see that Brian Jacques drew very heavily on traditional European folklore. After all, when he wrote Redwall he was literally a milkman. He had no more than an eighth grade education. The Redwall stories very much follow the traditional style, of folktales, legends, and epic poems. It is in effect a cultural commentary; everything he wrote was the heritage of his people. So no, he probably didn't read many complicated works. He was no literary critic. He wrote that which he knew. As much as we like causalism, the answer is simply so: some people are jerks for no reason at all, other than the fact that they can be (see Machiavelli), which he no doubt knew. And these he depicted generally as vermin, with pretty much no exception except for Blaggut (Veil and Romsca don't really count). *shrugs* Theorize all you like about why these are specific races, but keep in mind Redwall is really intended to be an allegory, not a universe with real laws, and you can only extend allegory so far.

[Ashleg]

You can write an allegory, but it is a universe with real laws.

Just...shifty ones and ones with plotholes, but if it had no laws it would make no sense.
See, one of those laws is vermin are bad and Woodlanders are good.

[clunylooney]

In some places this is completely correct.
But wouldn't any emotionally healthy person be at least a *tiiiny* bit disturbed they just killed a guy?
Most heroes would only go that far if they absolutely needed to.
Or maybe not even, but at least they'd have emotion.
Some of these guys are so stoic about it and then once whoever it is is dead it's like nothing happened.

In their mind, they don't see killing vermin as killing "a guy". They see vermin as a different type, a type of evil that should not be sypathized. And to be honest, most fo the time they are correct. But there is one thing about the whole killing vermin thing. In Salamandastron, a shrew just kills a rat that the good guys have taken prisoner to find the way, and then nobody cares afterwards! He was promised freedom after he showed them the way and was killed and no-one cared. In Taggerung as well, Ribrow is promised freedom after he tells Tagg everything and then the pygmy shrews just kill him. I hated that and when that happens it actively gets me infuriated.

[taggg]

there are some characters who feel really guilty when they kill another -  I remember Tammo in the long patrol had a sort of panic attack when he killed a stoat (I think) and felt very very guilty.

[clunylooney]

Another thing, remember that redwall takes place in no particular time period, but it is definitely around medieval times. Back in those times, people were a lot more chill with death. Also, animals in real life don't really care if they kill other animals.