JD Vance has a geeky fascination with The Lord of the Rings, reports on his investments reveal—and he might even see himself as a modern-day Frodo leading an ideological struggle against a looming “darkness.”
Donald Trump’s running mate named his investment partnership, Narya, after one of the rings of power in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasy trilogy.
Vance worked alongside his mentor, Peter Thiel, for two years from 2016 at the venture capitalist’s Mithril Capital, named after the strongest metal in Tolkien’s Middle-earth and mined by fictional dwarves. Thiel founded Palantir Technologies, which took its title from a crystal ball in the possession of Sauron in Lord of the Rings.
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The Hillbilly Elegy author also invested in defence start-up Anduril Industries. Anduril is a magic sword in the books, wielded by Aragorn and known as the “Flame of the West” or the “Sword Reforged.”
Vance, 40, was in high school when director Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations of Lord of the Rings were released between 2001 and 2003, winning 17 Academy Awards and grossing $2.9 million at the box office.
Asked in a 2021 podcast to name his favorite author, Vance answered, reported Politico: “I would have to say Tolkien. I’m a big Lord of the Rings guy, and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up.”
John Shelton, policy director for Advancing American Freedom, has compared Vance to Galdalf, the good wizard in the book.
“Gandalf, unlike the other great powers in Lord of the Rings, cared for the hobbits and other lowly people of Middle-Earth, and so it is unsurprising that Vance would see himself as a kind of Gandalf, caring for the forgotten people of his hometown, keeping a watchful eye on them against the corrupting effects of the world,” he told Politico.
But conservative writer Rod Dreher, who was invited by Vance to his initiation into Catholicism in 2019, said Frodo was a better fit, telling Politico that Vance “is thinking broadly about how all must join in the great struggle against darkness — there is no avoiding the struggle — and how God can use the humble and the lowborn to do great things.”
“Think about it,” he continues. “Who would have imagined that sad, scared little Ohio boy living in a wreck of a family would have come through it all, and risen to the gates of supreme political power? What might God be doing with him?
“J.D. Vance might be Frodo of the Hollers, a veritable hillbilly hobbit.”
