In Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Manfred’s son is Conrad. Conrad is a fifteen-year-old prince and the younger brother of Matilda, born to Manfred and Hippolita.
The novel opens on Conrad’s wedding day to Isabella, the daughter of the Marquis of Vicenza. Before the ceremony can take place, a gigantic helmet mysteriously falls from the sky and crushes him. His bizarre death sets the entire Gothic plot in motion and convinces Manfred that an ancient prophecy threatening his family is being fulfilled.
Conrad is sometimes confused with Theodore, who becomes the novel’s central young hero, or with Matilda, Manfred’s surviving child. Conrad’s death also drives Manfred’s increasingly desperate and immoral attempt to marry Isabella himself, since he fears that his family line will end.
Published in 1764, The Castle of Otranto is widely regarded as the first Gothic novel. Its haunted castle, supernatural omens, family secrets, tyrannical authority, and doomed heirs helped establish conventions later used by writers such as Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley.