Hope you don't mind me answering your questions this late, but I'm taking this as an opportunity to yap about this manga!
1) In a way, yes, the country truly was under the thral of the world! It's a solid fact that there is no magic in this world. The only exception is Kanna herself, who reincarnated into it. And because of her being reborn as the FL in the og story, she basically had the world in the palm of her hands. For as long as the story continued, the world would dance to her whims, simply because she was the female lead. And that was the misleading part. Kanna never ventured outside her role as the FL, nor did she try and look past the original plot. She saw the plot as her only way to her and the world's happiness. This caused the world to be affected by the plot until the story came to an end. In which case, everyone came to their senses, realised how truly dumb her plan was, and locked her away.
2) Because it was the only way to stop the King from killing Kanna. Sylph didn't want Kanna to die and needed to find some way to convince the King not to kill her.
Which is where the stories come in. What is Kanna good at? Telling stories! What does the King love? Stories! Thus came the deal: Bargaining Kanna's life with her stories. By doing this, she is paying for her life and giving Dalgenhelm something they considered valuable. Which is especially good cause the King loves his country and its stories more than anything else. Telling specifically 365 stories was the only number the King wouldn't budge on.
3)I can think of three reasons as to why Sylph wanted to save Kanna
a) She loved her stories (Sylph love stories, especially Kanna's, even after everything, and can't bring herself to hate the Kanna that told her the stories she loved)
b)They were both villainous in each other's lives (Sylph couldn't see Kanna's "all villains have to die in the end" mentality. Especially when she herself was put into that role, she couldn't see the narrative justice of the villains dying in such horrendous ways because of what they did in the story. Thus, when Kanna was put into the same role as her, she just couldn't see the justice in her dying.
c) The simplest answer: Sylph doesn't harbor any hatred of Kanna enough for her to die because of it. She can't completely forgive her, but isn't angry enough to get revenge for it.
Sorry for the long wall of text, I'm just a chronic yapper ╮(￣▽￣)╭
Thank you!!! This actually helped a lot!
I'm not very smart, so can anyone explain to me:
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- in the end, was Sylph's countrymen really under the thrall of Kanna & the mysterious pull of the OG!Story or were they just plain greedy & vindictive enough to use Kanna as a reason to exile Sylph?
- why was Kanna's punishment to tell stories for 365 days?
- aside from their initial friendship, was there another reason why Sylph was trying to save Kanna?