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Gideon does not come off as a severely abused and neglected child, and I think there's a reason for that.
Both she and Harrow have full on The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog-calibre childhoods. Harrow acts more like it, from her extremely low thresholds for sensory overstimulation to her entire social... everything. Those are all things kids raised in neglect are way more likely to deal with.
When I first read GtN I was in my habitual "Look self, not everyone works in your field, SFF authors give their characters these kinds of horrible childhoods all the time, nobody else cares about the realistic consequences of bringing a child up that way" mode. Like, it was nice that Muir seemed aware that the Ninth House's children generally would be more sickly and have higher fatality rates, but I also didn't want Gideon to be one speck less herself, so I could live with the slight implausibility. Anyway, Gideon comes off as a moderately abused and neglected child. Close enough!
And then we got Harrow the Ninth. We got the slow revelation of the Sleeper. The revenant. Wake's immense rage.
"I hated that damned sword for years. I don’t know why; it just felt strange—rancorous."
"Where the hell have you been hiding for nineteen years?” “Where—you—fucking—left—me. In my bones. Then a blade. In—that—fucking—hole.”
I immediately remembered: Gideon loved her sword so much she could frigging marry it.
Here's my theory: Gideon is Gideon in part because her mother has been haunting her for years.
Children need love if they're going to grow up. I don't mean that metaphorically. Babies that aren't held, rocked, touched, and soothed don't release the same mix of hormones that tell their bones it's time to move outwards. The steady attachment of baby to the adult who takes care of them is the central pillar around which children construct everything from control of their faculties to their senses of self. When babies are not cared for and able to attach to loving, reliable caretakers, they struggle in so many ways. I know this sounds really vague and ~vibes~-y, but I mean it in the sense of, "here is a curated reading list of scientific research on the topic, which I provide because I can't condense it while also shouting about Griddlehark on Tumblr".
So in GtN, Gideon just seemed like this ridiculously optimistic outcome for a severely maltreated child. She's optimistic and self-assured, brazen but moral, outgoing but centred. She's smart enough to hold her own against Harrow, to make complicated plans for the future, and to generally cope when her plans encounter hiccups. She knows that she wants to leave the Ninth House, and when she finally manages it, she doesn't panic or find some new miserable hole to shove herself into; she gleefully steps out and stretches her wings. And yet, her less-than-stellar relationships with people back home don't prevent her (in any way other than a little shyness) from forming new, varied, complicated connections with all the different people at Canaan House.
That's all... like, it is wildly optimistic to think that a child whose closest adult attachment figure from twelve months old was as distant and limited as Aiglamene would be like. That is winning the child development lottery.
That, or...
Maybe when she was seven, and her biggest emotional attachment (besides Harrow) was to the imaginary skeleton mother in her head, Aiglamene broke it to her that her mother wasn't out in rotation yet. Maybe Aiglamene led her to the niche where Wake's bones lay. Maybe when Aiglamene left, Gideon sat down there and said, Hello, mother. I love you.
Maybe it was then? Or maybe it was before? As a revenant, Wake's closest link to the living world was her own body, her own bones. But she also had thanergetic links with things like her murder weapon. Her murderer. The baby she'd died delivering to the Tomb. That made it possible before, certainly, but physical proximity counts for something, so maybe it was then, that Wake first tried possessing a living soul.
Wake whispering tiny inaudible suggestions into her daughter's ear like: Fuck this place. Fuck these bones. Light this place on fire. They don't own you. You don't owe them shit. Get up, get out, escape. Blow this place apart. Fight, defy them, make them pay, and remember that ten thousand years of history brought you here to stand against them. Here is what it's like to be a human being: to throw your shoulders back, to fight with people you trust, to gauge your enemies clearly, to know the power you punch with. And if there are no other standing orders: Live. Live. Live.
You cannot tell me Gideon's first act upon receiving a real sword, a soldier's sword, was not to take it down to her mother's niche and show it off. It was probably like offering her an open backpack to hop into.
Maybe all Wake's "mothering" was just her trying with singleminded rage to program instructions for detonation into her bomb. Even still: At least Gideon had a mum who wanted her to be as explosive as she was, and backed her up for every step of it.
Harrow didn't even get that much.