About Us

Annelise - Product Owner, escape artist

I spent my childhood reading Garfield. Thousands of hours. A sardonic cat with no respect for authority - looking back, the warning signs were all there.

Then I grew up sensible: history teacher. Eight years of modern and ancient history in high schools, then years teaching teachers at university. I have a University Medal and everything.

My specialty as a History major was the history of nationalism and terrorism - the field where you learn the most uncomfortable truth there is: atrocities don't start with wicked people. They start with people who are certain they're saving everyone. Robespierre was a nice bloke, right up until the guillotines.

Here's the thing about institutions, though. I kept escaping them. I once spent exam supervision pacing between desks silently reciting Invictus like a prisoner of war. I went back to teaching a few times - never lasted a year. Some people don't belong in institutions, and it turns out I'm one of them.

I'd taught 1984 and Animal Farm more times than I can count. Then 2020 happened, and I watched fear do things to public reasoning that I'd only ever read about in Orwell. Whatever you think about those years, one thing became obvious: even smart, decent people can be swept along by fear and certainty and never feel it happening. Nobody's taught to watch for it. I realised nobody had properly taught me either.

So in 2023 I did the thing I'd secretly always wanted to do instead of teaching: I started creating comics about it. (Well - commissioning the drawings. You don't want mine.) A rebellious, razor-sharp schemer, the loyal rule-follower who adores her (and gets conned anyway), and every dirty trick in the history of bad arguments.

Perri - Creative Director

Perri is my son and our Creative Director - which, in his case, means he actually runs things on the creative side. Story production, character voice, the beats that make something funny and then quietly devastating: that's his domain. He has the kind of quick wit that makes rooms go quiet for half a second before everyone laughs. If a line in a Duchess & Bruno comic makes you snort before you realise you've just learned something, that's Perri's work.

How we make it

I write every word first - the history, the substance, the meaning - and I read the original books to get it right, not summaries and not AI. Then Perri makes it funny and edgy. Every illustration is drawn by a human too. No AI writes or draws a word of it, and every date and fact is checked before it ships. A brand that teaches you to spot dodgy reasoning doesn't get to be sloppy with the facts.

The Supervisors

Duchess & Bruno is overseen by three cats and a toy poodle named Chloe, who is the actual love of Annelise's life and knows it. Yes, a cat-and-dog brand run by a cat-and-dog household. The research is ongoing and the sample size is excellent.

Why We Do This

Because the past holds hard-won wisdom about how to live, and most of it never makes it past school. Because the people who did history's worst things weren't stupid or evil - they were ordinary, and certain, and never stopped to ask whether they might be wrong.

And because we believe you'd rather laugh while you learn to see how it happens. History keeps making the same mistake, and it's rarely the villains who cause it. We'd like you to see it coming - starting with yourself.

Want to see what all this looks like in practice?

Grab the free Bandwagon Effect pack - a full comic, a true history disaster, and the activities, printable tonight. If your kid asks for the next one, you'll know we meant all of the above.

Or see the whole collection at once: The Complete Fallacy Bundle - all 24 fallacies, all 24 disasters, written by the history teacher you just met.