The trailer for “Mathilda,” a fictionalized retelling of the romance between the Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich — later Nicholas II, Russia’s last tsar — and ballerina Mathilda Kschessinskaya, looks like standard Hollywood-esque fare. Beautiful women dance, the royals live well, the poor are invisible. There are love triangles, fireworks, a diamond-studded crown rolling on the floor.

But this is more than just a two-minute preview of a feature marking the centennial of Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It has become the focal point of a bitter struggle over the right to creative expression, and over whether or not the Kremlin has become the tool of the very religious nationalist movement it has encouraged.

The more than 16,600 signatories of a Change.org petition to ban “Mathilda” believe that the trailer’s implication that Nicholas II engaged in pre-marital sex is a “deliberate lie” that dishonors his canonized status as a passion-bearer (someone who humbly submits to death) and insults “all of Russia.” The petition requests action from both the Ministry of Culture and Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill.

No serious historian disputes the affair between Tsarevich Nicholas and Kschessinskaya. But the traditionalism promoted by church and state makes no exceptions for the facts.