Galatea was once an apprentice to a powerful old witch who had raised her since childhood, after her parents died in a sudden accident. He was very kind, but there was a side of him that saw Galatea as something to hide away from the world, and restrict, so he would intentionally misinform and shelter her so she would be shy and dependent on him.

His treatment of her was traumatic, in a sense, even if she doesn't consider her old teacher a bad person for it - she sees him as someone desperately lonely, who lost a daughter of his own long ago, who lashed out in toxic ways against her to satisfy the void inside him. She has long since forgiven him as a person, but the scars of this treatment have made Galatea cold and desperately self-sufficient, terrified of ever being under someone else's thumb.

She is fixated on having ways to control everything about herself and her environment - which is why she's decided to control her own mortality, putting her own conscience inside a doll