Well, that and literally playing God. I don't think the natives would have been quite so upset if the protagonists hadn't let themselves assume the role of Alexander Returned.

H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen could have gone that route, except that King Kalvan (Pennsylvania State Police Corporal Calvin Morrison from our 1960s who gets dropped into an early medieval timeline) made a point very early on of denying any sort of divinity for himself.