The original proverb is "to the victor belongs the spoils" which means that the winner of a contest or battle gets everything that goes with victory. The proverb was first recorded in 1832, in a speech made by Senator William L. Marcy of New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald turned it around in his novel the Beautiful and Damned (1922).
Fitzgerald's provocative epigram pointed out the moral that that possessions might become possessors. Ostensibly, Gloria is the spoils, the prize which Anthony desires, the woman-as-thing. To own her is to fulfill desire, but, as Anthony learns "desires just cheat you." In this reading, it is Gloria, the "spoiled" child, both pampered and tainted, who comes to own the man who own her. If so, she is as much the victor in this battle of love, and Anthony is "spoiled ," infected, by the disease beneath her beauty. Yet in another sense, Anthony comes to Gloria already tainted; he is the "spoiled" boy ruined by the money that protects him from life and growth. Who, then, is the victor? Who the spoils? Because these characters are twins, they are both victors, winning the objects of their desire, and both spoiled, because in the long run, desire is a cheat.