Saner, sturdier gardeners than I may find that growing their own 'Mermaid' rose to be a completely-resistible siren song.

Partly, maybe, because they already knew about 'Golden Wings'.
Quite similar yes?

Here's the Mermaid picture for comparison.

OK, OK: Mermaid's petals acquire much more of a yellow intensity as they approach the stamens. (Well, don't we all.) Golden Wing's petals just get a bit of yellow blush, which is less intense on every level.

True, Golden Wing's flowers can be every inch as big as Mermaid's.

But Golden Wing's brown pollen tips afloat over the orange stamens, while an interesting contrast in themselves, let alone to the pale-yellow-then-white petals around them, are a contrast in color and therefore mood. An interruption. By comparison, with Mermaid there's an "I'm Getting Yellow, and now I'm getting Yellower Still" progression of white outer petal to yellow inner petal to really yellow stamens. There's a single-mindedness, a dedication to the mission—of getting yellow—but hey, a goal's a goal—which goes with my whole "seductively naive" slobbering over Mermaid.

Then again, Golden Wings' flowers offer progression instead of constancy: They may be yellow-blushed white as adults, but they start out entirely golden.
And with their immature pollen still pure yellow—brings back painful memories of youth, doesn't it?—but in poignant, even dramatic, contrast to the deep burning redness at the heart—painful memories of youth in every sentence here!—Golden Wings' flowers have a narrative thrust that Mermaid's don't: Youth into maturity, yet glorious at any age, and with one's face proudly held up to greet each new dawn along the way.

And as befitting the fantasy, Mermaid's flowers follow a purer as well as quicker plot, holding to their yellow theme. After all, one doesn't grow old in the company of a mermaid. It's all over in an hour, a minute: You succumb to a mermaid's infatuation and then you're dragged under the waves and destroyed. There's no tomorrow, no follow-up. Fantasy indeed.

I'm growing both Mermaid and Golden Wings. They are mutual antidotes: If I find myself, uh, "overboard" with Mermaid, well I can just dump her in favor of Golden Wings. Similar but not, and in some ways better because of it. And even if, by luck and dogged effort both, my Mermaid flowers a-plenty and grows huge, that doesn't mean I must forsake my Golden Wings. With all possible pleasure in my Mermaid finally sated, I can return to Golden Wings free of my Mermaid yearnings. I can enjoy it for itself, not as a substitute for a fantasy.