> I am very clearly focused on the notion of "nothing".
You're taking "nothing" very literally. My point was that he was not born into the crown, and that based on his birth, he could never have hoped to wield much of any political power, had it not been for the Revolution.
> an exclusive social tier
It wasn't nearly as exclusive as you're making it out to be. There were hundreds of thousands of people with higher social rank than Napoleon.
> his subsequent study at École Militaire, and finally being commissioned as an officer, he would not have had the opportunity to shine
That's probably true, but not because studying at the military academy at Brienne was anything particularly prestigious. It's because the Republic was in desperate need of competent officers and under extreme military pressure, so people from fairly low social stations and with little military training were being put in command of significant forces. Lots of people from outside the ruling class rose to high stations during this time. Napoleon was simply the most extreme example, because of the seeming military miracles he pulled off and a great deal of political shrewdness.
What you're arguing is a bit like saying that Albert Einstein was just lucky to be born to a family that could afford tutors. But being born to decent circumstances were just the beginning, and the vast majority of people born to those circumstances go nowhere near as far as Einstein did. Napoleon wouldn't have been who he was had he been born a serf. But he was also probably the greatest military mind in history, and without that we wouldn't be talking about him here.
> almost all of the major spiritual and secular figures in history, regardless of period or locale, belonged to (or were closely attached) to the upper classes.
I don't think that's true at all of the era we're discussing. The people who rose to prominence in France during the Revolution tended to be decidedly middle-class: lawyers, penniless minor nobility, journalists, army engineers, minor clergy, and so on.