Lydia Zeresi (D5)

Lydia Zeresi (née Tolan) is a character who appears in Wes Imlay's The Devil You Know, Battlestar Victorious Volume Three, Once Burned, Thrill Week, and Ride of the Valkyrie.

Early Life
When Lydia Tolan was born she could not possibly have known the life she had come into. The Tolans were feared by many not just on their own colony of Canceron but on most of the Twelve Colonies. Her father, Carl Tolan, had founded the Basileus Crime Syndicate and using what can only be described as brutal methods this organization quickly established itself as the dominant underworld force on Canceron. Lydia was largely protected from her family’s shady dealings as she grew up although she enjoyed the lifestyle it brought. As she entered her late teens she began to suspect what her father was upto when he was at ‘work’ but it wasn’t until she turned eighteen that she truly fathomed who her father was.

During the Cylon War the Colonial Fleet wanted to recruit the Basileus to help with the war effort. It was during this time that she met and fell in love with Vincent Zeresi who was an Electronic Countermeasures Officer aboard a CSAR Raptor. Vincent had something of a reputation as being a womanizer but he did fall in love with her and vowed to stay by her side forever even though it entailed him joining the criminal family.

Accepting her heritage
It’s hard to believe now that Lydia Zeresi was reluctant to follow in her father’s footsteps and take the reigns of the Basileus after his death. Nevertheless she found herself forced to fight for control of the organization when Carl Tolan died. She emerged the victor and quickly embraced her new position. She continued the ruthless nature of the organization started by her father and lead the Basileus up until the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. One of the biggest changes she instigated was to move the base of the organization’s operations to Amarna. She considered the city to be ‘lucky’.

Family the most important thing.
Although she reluctantly embraced the role she had been given by her birth right she did go to great lengths to ensure that Lacey Tolan, whom she had taken care of following her parent’s death, did not go into the family business and instead followed the example of Scott Tolan, her first-cousin, by pursuing an honest career in the Colonial Fleet.

So far in Dimension Five there have been three children of Lydia and Vincent's revealed. Levi Zeresi, Briana Zeresi, and Stuart Zeresi. Briana was murdered in Amarna by a serial killer and left behind a son named Davin, whom Lydia took in to raise.

In Volume Three of the Battlestar Victorious series it is also revealed that Lydia Zeresi died on the day the Cylons attacked, leaving plans in place for her son Stuart to assume leadership of the Basileus.

Rescuing the President’s Sister and Niece
Lydia Zeresi was instrumental in the rescue of President Adar’s sister and niece from the Sagittaron Liberation Army (SLA) by providing information to Scott Tolan and his rescue team. Her organization’s participation had an unfortunate side effect however in that following the operation Admiral Peter Corman decided that the Basileus’s participation needed to be concealed and in a joint operation with the Ministry of Intelligence (MoI) several assassinations of members of the syndicate were carried out. It was only after Lydia used her connections in the press to reveal these actions which violated the Articles of Colonization that they stopped although during that time she survived her own attempted assassination which was carried out by Captain Galit Malka of the MoI.