Powerful is part of a series of books referred to as The Powerless Trilogy, named for its first book, Powerless. Lauren Roberts began writing Powerless when she was an 18-year-old college student and a prominent poster on BookTok, a community on TikTok made up of readers and book content creators. She says she was encouraged to write a novel after her followers responded enthusiastically to a passage of her writing that she read aloud online (Ramirez, Amanda. “Q & A with Lauren Roberts.” Publisher’s Weekly, 23 April 2024). According to an interview with Today, Roberts relied on her TikTok followers as a kind of writing group, reading scenes to the community and soliciting feedback (Vitali, Gabrielle. “Lauren Roberts Started out Reading Chapters to Her Social Media Followers. Now She’s a Bestselling Author.” Today.com, 30 April 2024). Roberts initially self-published Powerless, and its success led Simon & Schuster to acquire it and publish her subsequent novel, Reckless.

Roberts sets her trilogy in the Kingdom of Ilya with a ruling class known as “Elites,” who gained special powers after surviving a plague and banished anyone without these powers, branding them as “Ordinary.