Darke, who graduated in German and Arabic from Oxford University, did not pursue a career in academia but rather worked as a journalist in Damascus, Syria until the start of the civil war. In April 2019, after the Notre-Dame de Paris fire, she was inspired to write the book after pointing out her belief that Notre-Dame and all other Gothic architecture is based on a church in Qalb Loze, Syria, built by the Christian Byzantine Empire in the 5th century.