At this point, as someone once said in a different context, there are two things which must without fail be said.

First, that the depiction of the Bedel in Necessity’s Child is based on gypsy stereotypes. (This is pretty obvious even had the authors not said so in interviews.)

Second, that I am not comfortable about this, and wish it were not so.

I’m still going to cover Necessity’s Child for the project, because doing the whole series means doing the whole series, but I wouldn’t have felt right to go into it without saying that up front.