I’m not like, pro Avignon but:
a) they aren’t *that* much worse than plenty of non-french popes, like there are plenty of 70 yr runs of shitty Roman popes
b) lets be honest the whole thing was at least 60% Rome being OUTRAGED that they weren’t being treated like they were the center of the world anymore and, smarting at the loss of social capital (as well as probably some literal capital, pilgrims were a lucrative business) deciding that obviously the popes MUST be puppets to the french king to decide to reside in France because there was no other possible reason a pope might voluntarily leave Rome