Taquinil Selei

Taquinil Selei is a Prince of the Ruby Dynasty and heir to the Ruby Pharaoh in the Saga of the Skolian Empire, a series of books by Catherine Asaro.

Taquinil is the firstborn son of Ruby Pharaoh Dyhianna Selei and her second husband and nephew Eldrin. He resembles very much his mother, not only with his small, slender figure and dark hair but also with his enormous intellect. He is a genius who since early childhood showed huge talent for math and computer science. He studied economy and became a professor at the prestigious University of Parthonia. His predictions concerning the course of stock exchange trade are legendary. Once he calculated futures with such an extreme accuracy that he scared the Skolian Assembly out of their wits and they forbade him to ever get near a stock exchange, fearing he could destabilize the economy of whole worlds, if ever misusing his knowledge.

Taquinil’s brilliant mind is very fragile. He is the most sensitive psion ever born, lacking the mental barriers, that protect other empaths from emotions projected by people around them(a genetic problem due to his incestuous ansestry). When he was a child, his parents had to shield him permanently, which however became impossible as he grew older and wanted to have a life on his own. When he left to study at the university, his mind could’t endure the attacks of emotions and split into many different personalities. After a long therapy Taquinil was able to incorporate all of these personalities again. Doctors also put a biomech inside his body, that provided the chemicals his brain lacked, which were necessary to block empathic input. This enabled him to live an almost normal life.

During the Radiance War when Orbiter, where his family lived, is attacked by Eubians, Taquinil and Dyhianna jump into the Lock to save themselves from their pursuers, their bodies becoming wavefunctions in the psiberspace. Unlike his mother, who later coalesces on the moon Opalite, Taquinil doesn’t want to return to his human existence. In psiberspace he finally finds peace from the onslaught of peoples’ emotions that crushed his mind since he was a boy. Although it is unclear whether his mind and body can survive intact, without being slowly dissolved in the structure of the Kyle Web, he decides to stay. The content of Catch the Lightning indicates that 50 years after this incident Taquinil is still considered either dead or missing.