If Varis, the leader of an empire, has no idea what his son is up to, then thats just bad leadership. (And often the reason why empires like that will fall) Also him being friends with Regula or not does not really change anything about the empire itself. I mean even the most horrible person in the world can have a friend, which does not change the fact that this person is horrible.

I am not going to say that Varis is evil reincarnated but if he in any way knew about the experiments and knew about Zenos doing in the countries..well that makes him into a bad person imo. Not necessarily evil but far away from good.

But all of Cilias words and mine will be for nothing anyway because we just see the empire as it is know and somehow this is bad. (We also often point out that this might change in the future and that the people itself might not be that bad but thats mostly ignored by some to write another personal attack)