A well-off person may have a maid or two in his house. Likewise, a truly wealthy person may have half a dozen or so, taking care of his understandably spacious home. And of course, it wouldn't be extraordinary for filthy rich people to have a couple dozen domestic workers to handle the housework of a really Big Fancy House. It also would be expected for aristocratic/monarchic families with large estates, major hotels, cruise ships and the like to have a ~100-strong domestic worker staff.
Compared to this trope, those guys are pikers.
A Maid Corps is an army of multiple hundreds of servants — sometimes apparently thousands — that typically are either way too many for just handling the domestic chores, or in addition to the "traditional" housekeepers and personal attendants, there are a more or less equal (or even greater) number of "maids" who perform decidedly "non-domestic servant" work, which may run the gamut from qualified medical doctors and nurses, to computer specialists, to scientists and mechanics, to personal bodyguards, and even a private paramilitary force. Bonus points if both variants are combined.
Oh, and usually they all wear Meido / French Maid uniforms. Yes, including the ones whose duties would normally require a completely different dress code. Such is the power of Fanservice.note
Some of the truly huge Maid Corps may leave one wondering how their employer's finances haven't collapsed yet from attempting to employ so many maids for so many (often high-budget) "responsibilities"; thus, having a Maid Corps usually designates a character as obscenely filthy rich.
Note that while the implementation of the first two traits (numbers and "responsibilities") can be somewhat variable (though at least one of them must be used in some form), unless the plot demands it at a certain point (after which it is often conveniently never brought up again), the third (finances) is a practically universal aspect of the trope; a typical Maid Corps should be a financial and bureaucratic nightmare to manage in Real Life.
Normally an all-female trope, though the rare Gender Flip does occur.
Examples
- Fireball: Drossel has thousands of robotic servants made by her Posthumous Character father. However, they're all invisible and programmed to stay out of her way, so for God knows how long she wasn't aware they existed. And then Gedächtnis told her about them.
- Girls Bravo: Fukuyama's estate is regularly patrolled by an army of gun-wielding maids who're all ex-military, but they're mainly there to cater to his perversion, since he has floor vents installed throughout the mansion to create updrafts whenever he wants to see under their skirts.
- Gravion: The staff of Klein Sandman's castle, excluding his Battle Butler, are the co-Trope Codifier. To quote the Meido entry: "Servant maids, guard maids, commando maids, hacker maids, mechanic maids, and even one member of the central robotics team who of course turns out to be a robot maid". See for yourselves
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- The title group of Hanaukyō Maid Team, and the Trope Namer (tai means "team, corps") and co-Trope Codifier. It also depicts the gender-flipped version (Ryuuka's menservants). The Hanaukyo maid teams loyally serve Taro, their master.
- Najica Blitz Tactics: Najica's first mission involves a rich woman who is served by such maid-bodyguards.
- Evangeline from Negima! Magister Negi Magi has an army-sized collection of Robot Maids living in her bottle-sized villa. Ayaka Yukihiro has the more "traditional" sort.
- In Sacred Seven, the Aiba Foundation has a literal army of maids. Not only do they take care of the typical house chores, but they also act as Mission Control, use weapons, and pilot support vehicles and generally act as backup for the main characters during battles.
- The Chinese Emperor in Curse of the Golden Flower has literally squadrons of elegantly attired maids. The opening sequences features them getting up, washing, dressing each other, eating breakfast etc. to the sound of a clapper.
- In the Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb, the villain's plan was to first destroy all fabric in the world and then rule it by becoming the only supplier of clothing. The obvious problem (how to provide such clothing) would be solved with his one expert seamstress and a cloning machine, which he planned to use to build an army of seamstresses. (In fact, the revelation that he had a cloning machine was the key to an important plot point that had puzzled the protagonist through the whole movie.)
- In Heavy Object, the maids of the Winchel family play the dual roles of family servants and bodyguards. The maids who support Havia accompany the 37th on one mission and are even able to overrun an enemy base, though having the element of surprise played a big part in their success.
- In I Shall Wear Midnight, Tiffany discovers a different side to the haughty and snobbish Lady Keepsake. Visiting Keepsake Manor with Letitia Keepsake (daughter of Her Ladyship) Tiffany discovers there are many more domestic servants on the staff than the size of the place suggests. Letitia tells her that four out of every five are officially retired, and half the rest are paid to look after the elderly retired staff who are no longer capable. Lady Keepsake, for all her impatience, bluster and general horribleness, believes it is only right to look after those in old age who spent their working lives looking after her family. Keeping them in expenses-paid grace and favor accommodation is a pension for them.
- Rebuild World: Played straight and gender-inverted with the Lion Steel Corp who are the employers of the Ninja Maid sisters Shiori and Kanae, mainly seeming trained for battle, as first displayed when Chloe shows up with 15 of each gender as her escorts. As an ancient tradition (from the Precursors Artificial Intelligence Alice that rebuilt the company), all of the servants they train wear Powered Armor tailored over to make them look like a maid or Battle Butler, with the more advanced sets looking less stylized and more functional by necessity. Both genders get Recruited from the Gutter as children and given extensive brainwashing to be so fanatically loyal to the company some are Not Afraid to Die. The abovementioned sisters were rated in their lowest category for not fitting that standard; Shiori for her Undying Loyalty to Reina above the company, and Kanae for being a Blood Knight.
- Sun Shang Xiang (as she is known in other works) in Romance of the Three Kingdoms was said to have over a hundred maids at her command the very least, all of them trained to be Action Girls by Sun herself.
- In the Thursday Next series, due to an accident with sending generics into Rebecca, there are thousands of copies of Mrs. Danvers. They're used as an actual army.
- Warhammer 40,000: The Adepta Sororitas have the Ordo Famulus, who work as servants in the households of imperial nobility. While, when seen per household, they are not a corps it is one giant army of maids of the Ecclesiarchy spread throughout the Imperium and is working as such. They do perform regular maid-duties like educating the children and organizing the household with the regular staff, but do so with a greater agenda in mind: They influence both the nobles and their heirs towards the Ordos goals. In a more discreet manner they are also spies: They look for any heresy in the nobles household. They also manipulate noble weddings and family ties to both discourage any mutation or taint in the noble bloodline while trying to breed the perfect qualities in the nobles offspring. Finally, they are a literal army, as they all have basic military training and some are veterans of the Ordo Militant of the Adepta Sororitas.
- The Royal Navy of Azur Lane has the Royal Maids, who are led by Belfast, and made up of the Town-class cruisers (minus Southampton), the C-class cruisers,note the Kent-subclass of the County-class cruisers, and the Dido-class cruisers (minus Black Prince). As they are all Anthropomorphic Personifications of British warships from World War II, all of them also count as Ninja Maids, with the Royal Maids being just as much a Praetorian Guard as they are maids. Sirius is even stated to have been brought on specifically to perform bodyguard duties, and is extremely bad when it comes to doing anything a normal maid would do, while Sheffield is an expert in cleaning up "garbage" and "messes" with her pistols (though thanks to her detergent bullets, she's also good at cleaning up literal garbage and messes with her pistols).
- In several of the Castlevania games, Dracula has one of these — the Persephone monsters, who are cute girls in maid outfits, often with vacuum cleaners. They also know kung-fu.
- Mega Man:
- Yaito from Mega Man Battle Network has a veritable army of maids, who in the Animated Adaptation can be seen in montages throughout several episodes doing random chores across the city.
- Likewise, Ritch Dotcom from Mega Man Star Force has Secretary Corps who are Inexplicably Identical Individuals. Justified in the games where non important NPCs have generic sprites, but they all look the same in the anime.
- Kesselring, the transgender vampire gentleman from the Rance series, has a whole army of maids, both ninja and otherwise, under his command. It is comprised entirely of battered women who he took under his care.
- Touhou Project: Remilia Scarlet has several hundred maids and is always hiring for new ones. This seems to be mostly for the sake of showing off her wealth or having someone to boss around, as with the exception of Sakuya they're all fairies, who are next to useless for actual work. In one of the official manga, she adds a gaggle of hobgoblins to the household roster, who are more competent but mostly kept out of sight.
- Count MacGuire of Ys: The Oath in Felghana had one of these, judging by the number of Mooks in maid outfits throwing kitchen knives who show up when everyone in Valestine Castle who isn't a named character gets turned into a monster.
- Dutch East India Company official (and later its head) Rijckloff van Goens described Amangkurat I of Mataram (a monarchy on Java) in a 1656 text as being the only man in the royal court after nightfall, surrounded by about 10,000 women. These included his four official wives, as well as numerous senior princesses, concubines, attendants and slaves. According to historian Jean Taylor, Amangkurat I also had the inner-most circle of his personal bodyguard composed only of women.
