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How were kings chosen in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?

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Map showing Poland's territory in 1634 under the reign of Wladyslaw IV Vasa, shaded in pink and spanning from the Baltic Sea in the north to near Kyiv in the southeast. Major present-day cities such as Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk, Vilnius, Minsk, Lwow (Lviv), Pinsk, and Kyiv are marked within the territory, with surrounding cities like Moscow, Riga, Vienna, and Budapest shown for reference. — Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Poland's territory in 1634, during the reign of Władysław IV Vasa.

Following the death of the last Jagiellonian king, Sigismund II Augustus, in 1572, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth transitioned to a system of elective monarchy.12

Kings were chosen through a process known as viritim election, which allowed all members of the szlachta (the nobility) to participate directly in the voting process. This practice established a form of noble democracy where the monarch was selected by the political nation rather than through hereditary succession.12

Upon their election, monarchs were required to sign two foundational documents that served as a contract between the king and the noble nation:

Henrician Articles: A set of constitutional laws that limited royal authority, mandated biennial meetings of the Sejm, and guaranteed religious liberty as established by the Compact of Warsaw.32
Pacta Conventa: A personal agreement between the king-elect and the nobility, outlining specific obligations the monarch had to fulfill.2

Crucially, these articles granted the gentry the right to renounce their allegiance to the king if he failed to honor these constitutional commitments.32