Describe in what ways the murder of King Duncan affects Lady Macbeth?

Initially, all seems well. Lady Macbeth was the driving force behind Duncan's murder. It was she who set the whole thing in motion, cajoling her husband to get involved with the plot as well as planning everything down to the last detail. Yet ultimately, Duncan's murder proves her undoing, as it does with Macbeth himself. Once safely ensconced on the Scottish throne, Macbeth has no further use for his wife's advice and support, and so he sidelines her, carrying out a series of increasingly vicious murders without taking her into his confidence beforehand.
Ironically, Duncan's death comes to have a more serious short-term impact on Lady Macbeth than on her husband. Macbeth was always so unsure about getting rid of Duncan, yet now it's his wife who's wracked by guilt at her part in this heinous crime. Gradually, Lady Macbeth goes insane, wandering the halls of Dunsinane Castle, frantically trying to remove the imaginary stain of Duncan's indelible blood from her hands:

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him (act V scene i).

The question we need to ask ourselves is whether Lady Macbeth really has developed a guilty conscience over her part in Duncan's murder or whether she's been traumatized by her sudden loss of power and influence.

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