"DID she jump or was she pushed?" asked one royal biographer. Such was the surprise in London this week that Queen Elizabeth II, the standard bearer of conservative values who is determined to retain the trappings of pomp and circumstance that befits her position, should actually be considering revolutionising the monarchy.

The queen hopes the proposed reforms, described as the "biggest privatisation of them all", will take the British royals into the 21st century. They include allowing eldest daughters to succeed to the throne removing the monarch as the head of the Church of England allowing the "monarch to marry a Roman Catholic; reducing the size of the official royal family; and ensuring the monarchy becomes self financing.

It is hard to recall just how deferential and sycophantic the British public and media used to be to the royal family. Remember the hundreds of thousands of people who slept in the streets, determined to get a glimpse of Princess Diana on her fateful wedding day, only 15 years ago?

Now the mystique surrounding the royal family has been shattered. We know graphic details about their sex lives, with their telephone conversations printed in the media and every private move covered by photographers.

A recent Mori opinion poll shows a decline in almost every aspect of public approval and confidence in the monarchy. In 1984, 77 per cent of people thought Britain would be worse off without the monarchy - now it is only 34 per cent. In 1990, 69 per cent thought the monarchy would definitely continue for another 50 years - now it is only 33 per cent.

Perhaps most significantly of all, in 1991 as many as 83 per cent thought Prince Charles would make a good king - now it is just 41 per cent.

And with the Labour leader, Mr Tony Blair - who was born only a month before she came to the throne in June 1953 - pledging that his government would scrutinise every aspect of the royal family, the queen has been persuaded that she has to act to ensure the institution's survival.

We can see that these developments would find favour with Tony Blair should Labour win the next election. So, perhaps, she is jumping before she is pushed," says Brian Hoey, a royal biographer.

It has now emerged that "The Way Ahead" committee considering the reforms was set up by the queen following her "annus horribilis" in 1992. The committee of herself, Prince Philip, their children and senior palace officials is examining every facet of royal life.

In the past the committee's discussions have persuaded the queen to pay income tax, reduce the number of royal family members receiving public money from the Civil List, and forfeit the right to use the royal flight or the royal yacht for their private purposes.

HOWEVER, this time it appears Prince Charles is the driving force behind the current reform proposals, which may lead to the greatest changes in the family since the 18th century. These more radical reforms are regarded as his personal manifesto for how he would like to reign, if the opportunity still arises.

The most controversial proposal is to end the monarch's traditional role as the head of the Church of England. Prince Charles has repeatedly suggested that he would prefer to, represent Britain's multi cultural society and become "Defender of Faiths" rather than pledge an allegiance to "The Faith."

Such a change would also conveniently circumvent the prohibition on a divorced king and permit Prince Charles to marry his mistress, Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, without a fierce constitutional debate.

However, it is understood the queen is opposed to severing the links with the Church of England. "That will not happen in her life time. The queen sees the position as inviolable because she was crowned before God," says one Buckingham Palace aide.

For the royal family one of the most important reforms is the proposal to make them self financing. Under the present system, parliament agrees exactly how much taxpayers' money Queen Elizabeth should receive. The Civil List payments, which currently total £8.9 million, pay the living expenses of the queen, her husband and her mother.

Instead, the royal family is proposing to fund itself from the crown estates, which are worth over £2 billion, and include valuable property like Trafalgar Square and Regent Street. As the queen has no doubt calculated, even if she is taxed at the upper rate of 40 per cent, she would receive more than £55 million in income every year, representing a considerable increase on the present Civil List.

Prince Charles will again have noted that if the royal family is financially independent then parliament could not show its disapproval or interfere with his plans to marry Mrs Parker Bowles.

However, there is one slight detail the royal family appears to be trying to ignore. The crown estates belong to the queen in name only because their income was surrendered to the government in 1760. More importantly, in 1995 the profits from the estates were £94.6 million, most of which goes straight into the treasury's coffers.

And no government, of either political persuasion, would willingly give back such a large amount of money.

According to constitutional experts the only reform the queen is most likely to accept in her lifetime is lifting the 295 year old ban on the monarch marrying a Roman Catholic. She has always been distressed that any member of the family who has married a Catholic, like her cousin Prince Michael of Kent, has been forced to marry abroad and give up their right to the throne.

Any change in the line of succession, allowing eldest daughters to inherit the throne, will be retrospective and would have no practical effect until after Prince William becomes king, and if he has daughters. Prince Philip is a keen supporter of this reform, particularly as he always believed his favourite child, Princess Anne, would have been a "good King" - if only she had been born a boy.

Although Buckingham Palace is keen to stress that the discussions are only exploratory, when, or if, anything is decided the queen will have to discuss her proposals with the then prime minister.

All of them, except reducing the size of the official royal family, will require parliamentary approval and "legislation. So the modernisation of the British monarchy for the 21st century may well not be implemented until then.