Powerless vs. Red Queen: Where Inspiration Ends (and Plagiarism Begins)

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]At first, I thought the internet was just being dramatic because book talk loves throwing around legally significant words like plagiarism with little concern for the repercussions. But then I actually started reading Powerless and started keeping track of similarities between it and Red Queen. And somewhere around the 30% mark, I stopped asking myself whether these books were similar and I started asking myself how powerless got published in the first place. I took notes, a lot of notes. And after weeks of reading, comparing, researching a little bit of copyright law, and documenting over 70 similarities between Powerless, Red Queen, and even The Hunger Games, I have thoughts. Hi everyone, I'm Kim Argyle, and this is my highly anticipated deep dive and full case file on the Red Queen versus Powerless debate in relation to Powerless being accused of plagiarism. A few months ago, I was flooded with videos on my for you page accusing Lauren Roberts, author of Powerless, of plagiarizing Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. For those of you who don't know, both Powerless and Red Queen are very popular YA fantasy novels. But Red Queen came out in 2015 and Powerless came out in 2023, nearly a decade after Red Queen. Powerless follows an ordinary girl hiding among an elite society of superpowered people after being thrown into deadly royal trials where she becomes entangled with a powerful prince. The story leans heavily into romance, banter, and highstakes attraction with a dystopian fantasy setting. Red Queen follows Mayor Barrow, a girl living in a deeply divided society ruled by superhuman elites whose discovery of late onset abilities thrust her into royal politics, rebellion, and betrayal. The series places a stronger emphasis on political tension, class systems, and revolution alongside its romance. Before starting this little project, I just assumed that Powerless leaned more heavily on incredibly popular romantic tropes because it seemed farfetched that a book could be this plagiarized. you know, aren't there screening processes for things like this? But then the allegations got bigger and readers were pointing out things like exact quotes and verbatim scenes between the two books. And as someone with a little bit of a research background myself, that immediately caught my attention. I have a bio degree and I've conducted independent NSF funded research. I'm starting medical school soon. In science, proper accreditation is everything. There's a pretty disturbing and devastating history of marginalized voices not receiving credit for their work. So, plagiarism isn't really something I've ever messed around with.

[00:02:07]At the same time though, again, I was a bit skeptical because online people use the word plagiarism for everything. Two books share the same trope and suddenly everybody's calling for public execution. So, I wanted to figure out for myself whether or not these comparisons were actually substantial or whether the internet had completely overblown this. So, in March, I posted a video announcing that I was going to read both books back to back and document every similarity I could find.

[00:02:27]The video ended up getting close to a million views across Tik Tok and Instagram. And suddenly I had thousands of people commenting and direct messaging me asking me to continue with the series which meant I suddenly had a lot of reading to do. I started with Red Queen of course. I read most of it physically and then I switched to an audio book during a long road trip. I didn't take super detailed notes at first. Mostly just broad themes, character dynamics, and plot structure.

[00:02:48]But the second I finished it, and I mean literally like minutes after finishing Red Queen, I opened Powerless while everything was still really fresh in my mind. Unlike with Red Queen, I took very meticulous notes here. I used my Kindle for the most part. It's easier there to collect and filter through all of your highlights. Then I compiled every similarity into a master list which I later transferred onto a whiteboard for dramatic effect. Of course, very quickly into reading powerless, I noticed some interesting similarities. But before we get into the actual comparisons, I think we need to define some incredibly important terms first because people online have started treating inspiration, fanfiction, plagiarism, and even copyright infringement as if they're interchangeable terms. They are not. Lauren Roberts herself described Powerless as a love child between the Hunger Games and Red Queen. But how does that differ from fanfiction or even just taking inspiration for that matter?

[00:03:36]Well, let's clarify, shall we?

[00:03:37]Fanfiction has existed for a long time, and platforms like A3 and Watt Pad have given voices to millions of stories across countless fandoms. By definition, fanfiction is derivative work based on existing copyright protective material.

[00:03:49]And fanfiction itself isn't inherently problematic at all until money gets involved. Because once you start selling a story built from someone else's intellectual property, things get messy.

[00:03:59]But that's why books like Alchemize, which originated as Sunland's famous Harry Potter and the Handmaid's Tale hybrid fanfiction, Manicold, sparked so much discussion. Same with The Love Hypothesis, which started as a Rao fanfiction, and even 50 Shades of Gray, which started as a Twilight fanfiction.

[00:04:15]Who knew? The reason these works generally avoid any major criticism is because the authors transform the source material into something very distinct.

[00:04:21]You can still see the inspiration in a lot of these books for sure. Similar dynamics, similar structures, but ultimately the stories tend to stand on their own legs as independent works and that is incredibly important because all good fantasy has ultimately been borrowed from something else. Tolken, borrowed from Norse mythology. The Poppy Award, one of my personal favorites, draws very heavily from 20th century Chinese history. Harry Potter was inspired in part by the Little White Horse. Fantasy is built on familiar roots, but strong fantasy transforms those roots into something unmistakably its own. I always like to say I like a trope as long as I can't tell that it's a trope. That's how you avoid plagiarizing. You turn these ideas and these roots from your genre into something incredibly distinctive, transformative, and unique. The Marryiam Webster definition of plagiarism is to steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one's own, which obviously leaves a lot of room for interpretation, at least partially as a result of the ambiguity in its definition. And plagiarism is really difficult to prove in the court of law and so it's usually more of an ethical issue and tends to be upheld at the institutional level rather than the legal level. Copyright infringement on the other hand is a legal permission issue. You can plagiarize without infringing and you can infringe while still giving credit.

[00:05:27]It's a bit complicated which I suspect is part of the reason why we haven't heard anything about Aviard pursuing this in court. Derivative work is another incredibly important definition here. A derivative work becomes a problem when it copies specific scenes, structure, arcs, distinctive dynamics, or recognizable phrasing without meaningful transformation. I think Victoria Aar summarized this entire discussion best when she said in her own podcast, "The line is crossed from inspiration to infringement when it becomes a distraction." And that became my issue with Powerless very quickly. If powerless shared just a few elements with Red Queen, the magic system, the sister dynamics, the the royal romance or something like that, I genuinely don't think that anybody would have batted an eye. In addition to the density of similarities, what also concerned me was just how often entire scenes, dynamics, and story beats mirrored Red Queen with almost exact precision, meaning no transformation whatsoever. I should not be reading entire paragraphs, scenes, or chapters that feel like they could be dropped directly into the other book without confusion. And not to toot my own horn here, but I am a certified mood reader.

[00:06:28]I typically read between seven to 10 books at once and I have never had issues with mixing up stories that I'm reading at the same time. So, when I started blending scenes from these books together and getting confused about characters from each series, I knew something was terribly wrong. And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, the breakdown itself. Essentially, I organized my notes chronologically in order of appearance and powerless. Some of them might be a little bit off in order, but I also colorcoded them. The really glaring and very damning similarities in my opinion that are most indicative of probable plagiarism on part of powerless I indicated in red.

[00:07:03]The few things that I think are just incredibly common tropes in the fantasy genre I left in blue because they're borderline negligible but I still noted just because it is a similarity and the stuff that I thought kind of fell in between where it's like not a major glaring issue but still contributes to this net probability of plagiarism is just left in black. The first benchmark, by the way, that I had to stop at to start collecting notes because there were already so many similarities was at a mere 7% of the way through Powerless, by the way. So, these are all the similarities I noticed between Powerless and Red Queen at the 7% mark. The FMCS are both thieves. The Reds are essentially comparable to the ordinaries. They lack magical ability.

[00:07:39]They're marginalized and outrightly hunted by the regime. Likewise, the silvers are essentially comparable to the elites. They possess magical ability and hold the power in their society.

[00:07:49]Also, between the elites and the silvers, both of them not only possess power, but they have variable types of power. So, the type of power that they might be able to manipulate is different from individual to individual. The FMC is fiercely loyal to her sister. Okay?

[00:08:03]And I know I know Adena is not Peyton's sister, okay? before people come after me in the comments. But it is an incredibly sisterly dynamic to the extent that if unless I'm misremembering, I'm pretty sure Peyton even goes so far as to kind of describe her as like a sister. So, let's not nitpick here. The sisterly dynamic is what's important. The FMC's have silver hair. Kings run an oppressive discriminatory regime against the ordinaries or the reds. These are all the similarities with the MMC's. Both MMC's are the stronger fighter between the two princes or brothers. This is in red because this to me was weirdly specific. One brother of each MMC prince pairing manipulates fire. So, it's either the MMC himself or his brother, but that's kind of his elite power. I thought that was a bit specific considering all the things that had to be similar in order for that to be the case. The MMC's also kind of have similar names. We've got Cal and Kai.

[00:08:52]Both MMC's brothers are the softer, more charming, at least in public image. The MMC is a prince and the MMC has a half brother with the king for the shared parent. Evangelene and Blair are also very similar characters to me.

[00:09:04]Evangelene, I believe, is Red Queen.

[00:09:09]Yeah, Blair is powerless. They're both daughters of war fighting nobility that are either the MMC's intended or the expected betrothed. And then the final similarity that I noted at the 7% mark, and this is a big red one, is that the FMC's meet the MMC for the first time, attempting to rob them of their coin, not knowing who they were. So, mind you, that was 7% of the way through Power List that I already took note of all of those similarities. And I guess a bit of a disclaimer here. These are just things that I noticed. I'm sure I missed a few things which should only lend more to the fact that this is a problem. Then we got to the 30% mark. The FMC's witness a civilian getting whipped in a very specific context or situation. This was another big red one to me and it's tied to a direct quote that we'll discuss here a little bit later. The FMC has a sister that loves to sew and works as a seamstress. It's a lot of S's. The elites and silvers avoid intermaring with or breeding with ordinaries or reds. The FMC's have to pretend not to be something to avoid death or capture.

[00:10:04]The MMC's have a surprise softer side despite their violent role or work.

[00:10:08]That's an incredibly common trope in romantis. Still worth noting in my opinion, but I put it in blue cuz that's like every MMC I've read in every romanty book for the past 5 years. The MMC's have scenes where they have to reluctantly torture someone or someone's Oh, this one was a red one. So, there's a silencer named Micah in Powerless, who's essentially the same character as Arvin from Red Queen. Um, they're both elites that have the power to suppress other people's powers. They also both specifically have incredibly important fight scenes with the FMC at different stages in the book, but they still have very pronounced, very important, very story defining battles with the FMC's. There's a love triangle between the FMC and the MMC and the MMC's brother. Okay. And then this one was a big fat red one. In fact, this is one of my favorite ones to bring up anytime someone still kind of fights me on powerless plagiarism allegations.

[00:11:02]It's painfully painfully identical. So, the brother of each MMC initially asks the FMC to a ball, but then the MMC steals the FMC away in the middle of the night for a private dance lesson to prepare her for dancing with his brother. It was at this point that I kind of took a break for a second and actually talked a little bit more about the media surrounding this discussion because I think that's so critical to understanding why this is such a contentious topic on book talk and in person because this issue also extends well beyond just the authors and their fan bases. For instance, guess what I noticed when looking at book descriptions on Amazon for each title in preparation for this video. So Powerless is described as a New York Times bestseller and a forbidden romance, etc., etc. But guess how Red Queen is described? Perfect for fans of Lauren Roberts's Powerless. Now, I really shouldn't be surprised because guess who's producing the Powerless adaptation.

[00:11:55]But this is part of the problem. The newer, more marketable series becomes the main reference point. And suddenly the book that came out first is being framed as if it exists in Powerless Shadow instead of the other way around.

[00:12:06]And when publishers, retailers, adapters, and marketing teams all reinforce that narrative, it changes public perception. New readers don't discover Red Queen as the influential series that helped shaped the corner of YA fantasy. They discover it as the book that's kind of like Powerless. That's the frustrating part. Not just the similarities themselves, but watching the industry reward the copy so aggressively that the original starts getting treated like an imitator. Not to mention that actual readers and lovers of Red Queen aren't usually fans of Powerless because they immediately get rightfully pissed off at the blatant copying that occurred there. And frankly, the writing is nowhere near on the same level. Okay, but what about the authors themselves? Lauren Roberts has posted multiple videos describing her book as >> as if this book and uh this book had a child that doesn't really resemble the parents as it gets older.

[00:12:51]>> Needless to say, posting a TikTok about what inspired your work is not meaningful in any legal or formal sense and was purely for marketing. Roberts exploited the notoriety and success of Red Queen and the Hunger Games by posting that video and description. It was a sales pitch, not a disclaimer, and fans need to stop using those videos as justification for what she's done. But unfortunately, from there, it only gets worse. fans of the Powerless series upon discovering Red Queen went so far as to DM and comment on Victoria Aviard's posts, accusing her of plagiarism despite the fact that Red Queen was published almost 10 years before Powerless. This somewhat backfired on Powerless fans, not just because their accusation was easily rebutted with a quick Google search, but also because it called attention to the glaring similarities between both titles on some of the world's largest social media platforms. And now we have creators like yours truly calling attention to the disturbing similarities between Powerless and not just Red Queen, but other titles as well, including The Hunger Games, which I had no plans of including in this analysis, but I couldn't in good conscience continue without doing so, considering all the similarities that I started to note by about the 30 40% mark in Powerless. So, you'll start to see those notes coming up here in a second as well. Now, while Red Queen has by no means failed in comparison to Powerless in terms of estimated sales and status, Powerless has received an Amazon TV deal that's an active fast production. While Red Queen has essentially existed in development limbo after initially getting picked up by Peacock, then facing significant delays in production from COVID in the 2023 writer strike. Part of the reason this is so controversial is that Profit is still on the table. But now back to the breakdown. By the 75% mark in Powerless, these are all the things that I noticed that it had in common with Red Queen. A big red one right out of the gate. There was an unplanned or unexpected bombing by the rebellion group at the ball. This is particularly interesting because it's not just that it was an unplanned bombing, but it caught the rebellion group itself offg guard. like they accidentally bombed the ball and it caught the FMC offguard even though she was secretly involved in the rebellion. So, it's just weird that it was a surprise for all individuals involved in both situations. That's incredibly coincidental. The rebel groups are comprised of ordinaries or reds. Healers immediately mend wounds and save the massacred people after the bombing. This was a big red one for me, too. So, the arena where the games are fought, and I'll talk about those here in a second as well, but the arena in Red Queen is called the Bowl of Bones.

[00:15:03]Guess what it's called in Powerless? The Bull.

[00:15:07]Yep. And then finally, the FMC plots to assist the resistance effort while romantically engaged with or entangled with one or both of the princes. So, it may seem like that's kind of a smaller section, like between 30 and 75% I only noticed, I think five or six additional similarities, but that's where it gets kind of interesting because it's at this point that I noticed there's some shocking similarities between Powerless and The Hunger Games. So, then I started taking notes of all the similarities I noticed at the 75% mark in Powerless that also had in common with the Hunger Games. So, again, the FMC's are from the lowest cast. The great purging in Powerless is essentially equivalent to the Hunger Games. There's white uniformed masked law enforcement officers. There's unexpected volunteering or entry of the FMC into the games. The FMC experiences a pretty comfortable lifestyle and lodging experience while preparing for the games. The pregame training is just as much about showing off as it is actually preparing for the games. In both titles, some tributes or volunteers are born and bred for the purposes of competing in those games. This one's a bit of a stretch, but the way that the MMC in Powerless was specifically trying to like feed and renourish the FMC kind of reminded me of the way that Peeta fed Katniss. Okay, this one's not a stretch, though. This one's a big fat red one.

[00:16:21]This one was insane. In both titles, in preparation for the games, there is a blue-haired televised interviewer. Her name is Tila in Powerless, and obviously that is Caesar in The Hunger Games.

[00:16:35]There's a healing salve provided by the games organizers that saves either the FMC or the MMC or both. Wolves or muts, canines of some kind attack the MMC and FMC at some point in the games. The games viewers love the uh love angle between the FMC and the MMC despite the fact that they're kind of starcrossed as competitors. Another big red one here. A gesture is used to show respect for the fallen that includes both the middle finger and pointer finger joining together. A glass bowl is used to collect the tributes and competitors names. Another big red one. The FMC's are great archers that use bows as their primary weapon in the games. And then finally, there's a specific scene in both titles in which the MMC tugs on the end of the FMC's braids or braid. It would be almost funny if it wasn't so concerning. Then it was time for collecting my final similarities in the last 25% of Powerless between both Red Queen and The Hunger Games. So, starting with Red Queen, the MMC's brother arranges for the FMC to visit her hometown toward the end of each title.

[00:17:39]The FMC has to manipulate one or both of the brothers for the sake of the rebellion, ultimately and deeply betraying them at the climax of each book. Lenny and Lucas are kind of similar characters to me. I mean, not only do they have similar names, obviously, but they're each assigned to an FMC, and there are these like charming, loyal bodyguards. Big red one here. And this one is tied to a direct quote. Um, the FMC's sister's sewing fingers are crushed. And it's a really momentous part of each book. The king is killed, and the brother to the MMC ascends to the throne. And then finally, the FMC is on the run at the close of the story. And then in that last little 25% section of Powerless, I also noted a few more similarities between it and The Hunger Games. The FMC sister dies violently and unexpectedly. This is technically a similarity between Powerless and Mocking Jay. Sorry if that's a spoiler for some of you, but it's in the same franchise, so I felt like it was worth noting. There's Ellie and Effie that are also, again, very similar characters, very similar names.

[00:18:39]They're both loyal friends and insiders that help with crafting the FMC's appearance for the sake of her progress in the games. And then finally, the FMC is involved in bombing the arena to prematurely conclude the games and initiate a rebel attack. Again, technically this is a similarity between powerless and catching fire, but I included it for the same reasons that I included the note from Mocking Jay. From here, there are two near direct quotes that are definitely worth mentioning.

[00:19:03]Red Queen, page 226, sorry, he says half embarrassed. Thought you were ready for it. And then in Powerless, page 170, sorry, I thought you were ready for it.

[00:19:11]Kit chuckles. These are both lines in reference to the FMC dancing with either the MMC or his brother. And then here's the sewing fingers line that so many people bring up and rightfully so. Red Queen, page 41, her eyes are on mine as he brings the butt of his gun down, shattering the bones in her sewing hand.

[00:19:27]And then Powerless, page 454, her sewing hands, her talented fingers broken, then they broke her. And just to kind of summarize again some of those interesting similarly named characters that tend to fill the same roles, we've got Cal and Kai, Lenny and Lucas, Ellie and Effie.

[00:19:45]And for the record, when I completed Powerless and made my short form video about this, this is what the whiteboard looked like after I detailed every single similarity between the three titles. It was at that point after finally completing Powerless all the way through that I felt comfortable providing my personal thoughts, my verdict as to whether or not Powerless was plagiarized. Based on direct quotes alone, I believe Powerless generously crossed the line from inspiration to plagiarism. I found over 70 similarities between Powerless, Red Queen, and The Hunger Games. And that's just me. I'm sure I missed a few. Lots of people have since commented in my videos, DM'd me, and provided their own lists where I know I'm missing a couple things, if not a lot of things. Lots of other readers and creators have noted their own discoveries. And these aren't just tropes. They're entire sequences, specific dynamics, near identical setups, requiring dozens of similarities just to culminate into the same scene.

[00:20:34]Eventually, all of this has to stop being dismissed as either accidental or coincidental. because from an ethical standpoint, it's really hard to ignore the fact that Powerless is indeed a plagiarized and heavily derivative work.

[00:20:47]Now, whether that's enough for a legal case, I have no idea. Lawyers of YouTube, you guys should make a video on this and tell me if there's a case here because I don't know whether more blame belongs to Lauren Roberts yourself or the industry and the companies that allowed Powerless to be published in the first place. I don't know. But I do know this. A few shared tropes is inspiration. dozens of mirrored scenes is derivative, but direct overlap in language, structure, and character development pushes into something that's so much harder to defend. Now, here's the part that may surprise some people because despite everything I've said in this video, I actually understand why some readers prefer Powerless.

[00:21:21]Personally, I'm an RF Kuang girly all the way. I like fast-paced high fantasy, intricate world building, and romance is more of a subplot if anything. So, neither Red Queen nor Powerless are usually my cup of tea when it comes to fantasy. But even though Red Queen wasn't my personal favorite, I still thought it was extremely well- constructed. The pros felt distinct, the world felt very intentional, and the story definitely had its own identity.

[00:21:42]Now, Powerless, on the other hand, I've mostly avoided discussing the AI allegations against Powerless because I simply can't verify them. That's all there is to it. A few years ago, Lauren Roberts supposedly admitted on Twitter to having used AI to elongate her sentences while drafting Powerless. And while I don't disbelieve the people who claim to have seen the tweet themselves, I've tried to remain as objective and evidence-based as possible in conducting the analysis. So, I have not brought this up. However, what I can say is that Powerless reads like AI. I don't know a ton about writing, but what I do know is you're supposed to show and not tell. In Powerless, the writing felt overwhelmingly telly instead of showy.

[00:22:21]And it felt not only almost detached in the same way the AI tends to write, but it also felt extremely unconvincing and frankly annoying because I can only listen to so many monologues about Kai wanting to drown in Peyton's ocean eyes before I start wondering what the heck happened between hello and a near declaration of love. And parts of the book just felt genuinely cringeworthy because why are we slow dancing in the middle of a fight to the death? Why are we skipping entire days of the trial? like we're not providing chapters or sections or pages on multiple days in the trials only to spend chapters describing the same person's eyeballs. I just didn't get it.

[00:23:01]I didn't understand the appeal personally. And I would say that that's irrelevant to the discussion because it is like whether or not I enjoyed either title is 100% unrelated to whether or not there's plagiarism that happened here. But the reason I bring this up is because the only part of Powerless that I would say I even remotely enjoyed was the ending. And that's likely because it was one of the only parts of the book that felt even remotely original. And that's the problem with saying that you love Powerless. What you're really saying is that you love the best parts of other works with a little more badly written romance thrown in. Mary Shel wrote Frankenstein as a teenager and people assumed for decades after its publication that a man must have written it for her. Zoranil Hursten preserved black stories and folklore while others built careers profiting off of the very traditions that she was dismissed for.

[00:23:41]She never really received proper credit in her lifetime. Florence Daks accused HG Wells of taking from her unpublished manuscript the outline of history. She lost and her work disappeared. History is full of creators, especially women and marginalized voices whose work was taken, repackaged, and made more palatable for the masses for someone else to profit from. And you know what allowed that to happen? The consumer. We decided what to buy, what to praise, what to award, and what to recommend.

[00:24:03]And when we choose the copy over the original over and over and over again, we are sending a message. And publishers listen, production companies listen, and they will keep going as far as we will let them. I did this series because I care about who gets credit. I care about who gets paid. And most importantly, I care about who gets erased. And if you care about books, about originality, about history altering works of art that need to make their way into the world because if they do, they will make it a better place, then yes, you should care about this, too. Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that you need to feel guilty for having enjoyed Powerless. And do not take this as encouragement to belittle or shame people, especially if they had no clue what they were reading in the first place. I don't advocate for that because beyond the fact that it's just unkind, it's also typically pretty unproductive. However, what I will always advocate for is being honest about what you're reading. Asking where these ideas came from and who they might have come from first. I don't want to be part of a system that rewards imitation over originality or popularity over impact, especially when so many people had to fight just to be heard in the first place. What we choose to elevate now determines what survives later. So please, please, please choose carefully.