The person who commissions a portrait may be buying control over how they will be remembered.

Commissioning your own portrait is buying a say in the record. The pose, the setting, the softening, the details included and left out: someone is paying for the version that will outlast them, and the resulting image is as much an argument as a likeness. Being remembered accurately and being remembered well are different purchases.

You make smaller versions of this choice constantly, in what you post, keep, tell, and let stand uncorrected. It is not dishonest to shape it. But it is worth knowing which parts you are curating and what they cost, since a well-managed record can end up leaving the people who loved you without much of the real thing.