Joseph Smith had the ability to become whatever other people wanted him to be

This made him attractive to women especially. They knew he was the man they had been looking for, all their lives.

His own wife, Emma, believed in him all her life, even as he changed frequently. She did not insist that he remain the same person, but was willing to accommodate whoever he had become. Whatever he was, was all right with her.

When he died. at the hands of a mob, this left her with a problem: which of his selves should she remember?

She adopted Joseph's solution: she remembered him as other people wanted to remember him. If they had forgotten polygamy, she forgot that also.

Her sons adopted this solution also as they joined the RLDS church. Their father was the perfect man everyone wanted to remember.