(I’m probably over analyzing things but I don’t care. But the vast difference between Val’s education and the common villager’s education is so interesting to me. Most of the notes found by random members of Temple Gate are nearly illegible, they’re almost completely illiterate. Not only is the spelling and grammar wrong, but just the speech patterns in general are very off.
Even Marta, who Knoth claims to have a close relationship with, was shown to have improper sentence structure. You never see her writing and most of which she says is just her repeating biblical text / Knoth’s sermons but when she’s arguing with Ethan, she makes mistakes like “the prophet don’t need your help” instead of the prophet doesn’t need your help.
Meanwhile, all of Val’s journal entries are articulated well, spelled correctly, and with proper grammar.
I feel like Val was the first person Knoth really came to fully trust. Knoth clearly used lack of education and information as a tactic to keep people under his thumb. If they were unable to find information that contradicted him their selves, then they’re less likely to question his word. They hadn’t much choice than to just believe him.
I’ve said before but Val had to have been born in Temple Gate, she didn’t join willingly, but despite being younger than a lot of the members, she was still Knoth’s righthand man. His chief deacon, his absolute favorite. Knoth gave her all the education that he deprived from others- and there’s a saying that goes ‘the mortal enemy of faith is knowledge’. Knoth is the one who gave Val the resources to start to question him. She had the ability and the insider knowledge of the true workings of their church to start to form her own thoughts and opinions, and she didn’t like what Knoth was doing. She got older and started to fully understand that he wasn't helping anyone, he was hurting people. He was a megalomaniac. Seeing as she didn't know anything else, it's not fair to simply say she should have left or gotten help from the outside. It's not that simple.
While this isn’t canon, I think it’s sort of an interesting thought that maybe he was grooming her to become the next “prophet” in a sense as he was getting older in age. He knew he wasn’t actually divine, he wasn’t immortal, but he probably needed someone to continue on what he was doing, and he thought it could gave been Val. But she ended up doing the exact opposite and betrayed him, turned some of his followers against him. With or without Murkoff, I think he set up his own demise when he tried to manipulate Val.)
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