EVERYONE in this is terrible somehow, especially Mia, though her specific terribleness is sloth, gluttony, and active incompetence.....the main difference between then and now is both fear for her life and that she managed to establish a better reputation to start with allowing people to misinterpret her in good ways rather then the reverse. And even then mostly just barely. If she didn't have her reputation as 'the wisdom of the empire' Rafina wouldn't have considered her spacing out over tomatoes as referring to their current situation and instead would have thought she was trying deflect the conversation away from punishing them or something.