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.
