He could have ignored them or became better than them. If he were acting like a king, he would be ordering people around like servants. If he was, than it was a bad habit. Countering is doing something to balance out a scale or a sitiuation. It is great to have the good side of your behavior scale lower than the bad side, but his bad side was probobally lower here. He could have done many nice things and acted more like a president not a king.
Your classmates may say things like,
"He just should've just stopped doing it" or
"He should've just ignored them" well you can respond with a variation of what I put up there.