What Happened to Ernest?

So, I've been required to read Frankenstein twice, once in college and once in high school, so I know that the book raises a lot of questions and themes, like the nature and importance of beauty and appearance in society and literature, what is considered monstrous in popular culture, the dangers of scientific exploration, etc, etc. But, to me, perhaps the most important question the book raises is what happened to Ernest?

In case you are unfamiliar with Frankenstein, let me give you a brief plot summary. Victor

Frankenstein, the title character, decides that it's a good idea to build an eight foot tall quasi-man, animal creature while he's away at college. After he brings the creature to life, he has a freak out and runs away. After this, his creature, through a series of convoluted events, ends up killing everyone Victor cares about as revenge for Victor not creating a female creature for the monster. That is, everyone except Ernest. At the beginning of the book, Victor has two brothers and one sort of sister. The monster kills one of his brothers, William, his sister, and his best friend, but about twenty or thirty pages shy of the end of the book his second brother, Ernest, apparently, just drops off the face of the earth.

So, during the final chapters of the book when Victor is running all over Europe looking for the monster, he's all like "my whole family is dead! I'm so sad!" and I'm like, "dude, what about Ernest?"
Seriously, I'm not sure if I missed the chapter where it was revealed that Ernest was a collective delusion that the whole Frankenstein family goes to counseling to get rid of, but I have literally no idea what happened to Ernest because, evidently, Victor does not consider him family enough to tell us if he's alive or dead. Which, obviously, kind of sucks for Ernest because, not only is everyone dead, but apparently his only living brother totally forgot that he existed. You, Victor Frankenstein, are a horrible brother.

I wish Ernest was the protagonist of this book.

But seriously, Ernest is an impressive character. The like two times that Ernest speaks in the book, he is so put  together and intelligent and really puts his family first. We need more people like Ernest in this book, because, let's face it, Victor is a total sissy. All he  does, the entire book, is just sit around and moan about how sad he is and how much his life sucks and moralize and faint and get sick. Now, I understand that that's all for literary reasons, but if Victor had been able to finish the female monster or if he had just taken care of his creature in this first place, no one would have had to die. I'm sure Ernest wouldn't have let that happen. Honestly, Victor just needs to pull up his socks and be a man.

Anyway, presumably Ernest is alive, someplace, somewhere reading Frankenstein and asking, "but actually, why am I not in this book?"

Just sayin'