Altogether forty-five Emperors had claimed the Spear of Destiny as their possession between the coronation in Rome of Charlemagne and the fall of the old German Empire exactly a thousand years later. And what a pageantry it was! The Spear had passed like the very finger of destiny through the millennium forever creating new patterns of fate which had again and again changed the entire history of Europe. ... According to the legend associated with the Spear of Longings, the claimant to this talisman of power has a choice between the service of two opposing Spirits in the fulfillment of his world historic aims -- a Good and an Evil Spirit.

The Spear of Destiny