I'm not talking about what in-game people say about Varis, I'm talking about what we can see of him as players. Cutting funding for the arts just because Solus liked the theater (petty and shortsighted); restarting the war with Eorzea after having barely solidified himself as emperor; choosing someone as unstable as Zenos as his heir. About the only thing Varis was good at was talking the talk, because everything else he attempted met with total failure. We're just lucky his idiocy only destroyed Garlemald in this timeline, instead of the other where his propensity towards weapons of mass destruction ushered in another Calamity a scarce five-ish years after the last one. Talk about a useful idiot.