Really? So being an orphan from the Denerim alienage, either during or before the Blight, before being scooped up by her adoptive mother, should have had no effect on her at all, because Cole doesn't say anything?
So when she refuses to talk about her past in great detail, it's because it was all great? When she talks about what it's like to be starving, that didn't bother her at all?
I know it's just a video game character, but it's not hard to have empathy even for a make believe person.
Rather to headcanon something to make a reason to have empathy for her.
On different note, I've read about someone romancing Sera as a male due to that gender bug, and when asked if the writing makes the romance feel out of place because of wrong gender, he said that only one conversation seemed odd – Sera saying that they both like girls, which actually wouldn't be anything out of place if we simply assumed that Sera is bisexual.
So Sera's romance conversations are on pair with un-specific dialogues of bisexual LIs from previous installments, but those had to be un-specific to save time and money. What justifies that in this case? Especially considering that there was put much thought into making Dorian's sexuality matter and that was the whole argument for having LIs with different sexualities?
I also checked out how Josephine's romance looks like, and compared male and female version (there isn't really any difference) – and must say that her romance arc has been clearly made with a male character in mind, it doesn't make any sense when you romance her as a woman given what we were told how homosexuality is treated in Thedas. Female voice was just recorded over lines intended for a man, without any effort to make it fit at all. It feels just like switching genders due to a mod or bug, but unlike how it is in case of Sera, it really makes it feel out of place.