Why does the MC really even care about getting recognised by people who are pretty much his adversaries? They only exceedinly grudgingly gave him the lowest possible honour they could possibly come up with, and the real motive was probably the random guess by an audience member: They find it hard to stomach having a villager among themselves, so they tried to mask it a little bit. I get it the MC is happy because his little girlfriend and the heroine are getting positive publicity, but he would have been better off making himself scarce. It's better not to bow down to people who are only mocking you, plus not playing by their rules, he would have made himself also more unapproachable. I guess he had his reasons, though.