Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat
Now that you mention it, we could expand our list.

More outsiders, from semi-peripheral areas, who took control of the main country and pushed it to great military successes, with insatiable expansionist policies:

Joan of Arc was from Lorraine - peripheral to French culture in her times.
Alexander the Great was from Macedonia.

With our trio of Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler they do share Simon's 'extremes of personal commitment needed to fulfill their ambitions'.

Do any of you know any others?
I don't think Joan of Arc and Alexander the Great fit the description;

Joan of Arc may have come from a marginal region of France and may have been from the 'politically marginal sex', but she never ruled anything, and was most likely used as a pawn by Charles VII and his advisors.

I also fail to see how Macedonia, after the conquests of Philip II, can be percieved as 'marginal'. Maybe it was culturally marginal to Greece and Persia, but it seems to me that Alexander's situation isn't comparable to those of Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler.

Maybe Byzantine emperor Basil I (who started life as a Macedonian peasant) and a Chinese emperor (can't remember his name) who also started as a peasant would fit into the category?

I think in going on with comparisons like this you will eventually find that most really famous and important 'rulers' in history didn't come from the established elite in some way or another. Probably because of this they had a reason to want to change things (in contrast to those who already occupied the highest echelons of society, and thus usually didn't have this drive).