[Everything] Can we talk about Tyrion and Varys?

"Given the circumstances, my lord, I believe extreme measures are warranted."

That was Varys talking about Bronn rounding up and killing all the known thieves in the city. What the hell happened to these two?

To begin with, they've been amazingly incompetent this entire season. Varys' intelligence network completely failed him when it came to enemy troop movements - which is information that people without an intelligence network have been able to gather in the past (Robb about Tywin's movements). Tyrion made plans that failed one after the other and even after those failures he kept insisting "Its still the right plan". They were the ones who put Dany in a difficult position to begin with - she has to show some real strength now if she wants to retain any standing as a conqueror. So she does a course-correction and now they bemoan how she is killing people?

Are these really the same characters we saw back in season 2? Characters who understood that sometimes bad things have to be done for the greater good (great, now I've triggered a meme)? Given their battle against Stannis, I seriously expected them to be made of sterner stuff.

Here's what Tywin taught Tyrion:

When your enemies defy you, you must serve them fire and steel. However, when they bend the knee, you must help them up. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you.

And here are a few lessons from Machiavelli:

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting....And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual.

Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant.

Dany is making all the right moves here. She is not burning people randomly or capriciously - she set very clear boundaries on who gets executed. She is giving them the chance to obey and by using one or two as example (quite astute, I might add, picking Randyll Tarly from the crowd), she is securing the compliance of the rest without going overboard. These are lessons I expected both Tyrion and Varys to understand from the beginning. After all they are touted as some of the best political players around. So why are they suddenly disturbed by this?

But actually seeing it is different, you say? Well, they've seen all this before and more. They should have enough political experience to understand why what Dany is doing is both different from some of her predecessors and necessary. Did they undertake the monumental task of putting Dany on the throne without being prepared for this? Did they expect everything to be rainbows and kittens while she took the throne? That somehow, magically, everyone would accept Dany with loving arms and she'd win the war without losing any lives?

In the name of making these two more sympathetic, it sure seems like the writers have destroyed what made them interesting and compelling in the first place.