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Flashback Narrative:
For three years, Kristoff had tried to carefully put things into perspective. He'd been exiled, but he'd done what he felt honor required, and he would live with the consequences. He'd been...replaced, but he needed to not resent the replacement. Resenting a small child would be ridiculous; he'd probably go mad.
It was really, the more he thought about it, more appropriate to feel for the boy a little; being the heir of Doom wasn't always easy, and Kristoff ought to know. So he tried to just hope his...little brother, as it were (Doom had had one heir, now he had another, what else should one call it without bitter, irrational reproach?), would manage all right, for Doom's sake, for - eventually - the country's, and for the boy's own.

Then the call had come that Vincent was now a runaway in New York. Of course. How ironic. There was very little, deep down, that Kristoff wanted more than to be back in Latveria, and here was the replacement model, his more favored brother, apparently eager to leave it.
Kristoff's responsibility was clear. His sense of duty was already keen enough, but he knew there was more. The longing for anything of home.
And the more he saw of him, and the more he talked to him (or was talked at by him), ohhh, the boy was a Von Doom, all right, whatever his name and his hostilities. Poised -- when not falling over a chair -- and clearly talented and bold as brass. Somewhat like Kristoff at that age, though with many obvious differences. And Kristoff wanted so much to help. Despite his bravado, Vincent needed to be cared for, and despite his own Kristoff yearned desperately to be needed.
He carefully made sure he wouldn't be tripping some little spell before he snuck into the room adjacent to his own, one night a few weeks after he'd made Vincent's welfare his concern. The eight-year-old's face, particularly asleep, was so vulnerable. Kristoff was quite careful not to wake him; neither the boy's current paranoia nor his constant pride could possibly bear that.
But Kristoff watched. And resolved. Over his dead body was anything going to happen to the brilliant little brat.