William Frankenstein

William Victor Frankenstein is the innocent and beloved youngest member of the Victor Frankenstein family, a child whose 'smiles delighted and warmed' his father's heart and whose gentle, playful nature made him cherished by all. On an evening walk near Geneva, while hiding during a game, he is encountered by the creature, who, observing the boy's unprejudiced innocence and thinking he might educate him as a companion, attempts to seize him. When William cries out in terror, calling the creature a 'monster' and threatening to tell his father—'M. Victor Frankenstein'—the creature realizes the child belongs to his hated creator. In a moment of rage and vengeance, he murders the boy, and William becomes the first of Victor Frankenstein's loved ones to fall to the monster's wrath. His death, leaving the 'print of the murder's finger' upon his small neck, devastates the family and propels Victor Frankenstein toward his desperate, ultimately futile pursuit of the creature across the frozen Arctic.